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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26007964">When We Were Birds</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheThoughtsThief/pseuds/TheThoughtsThief'>TheThoughtsThief</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Only children [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Child Abuse, Drowning, Families of Choice, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:29:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>39,985</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26007964</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheThoughtsThief/pseuds/TheThoughtsThief</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Damian and his mother had been steadily avoiding the Al Ghul name for six years, before finally landing in Bludhaven.</p><p>Or, a No Capes au following the unlikely friendship between Dick and Damian.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dick Grayson &amp; Damian Wayne</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Only children [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1904260</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>167</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>302</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. September (Bludhaven)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title taken from the poem My Son Asks for the Story About When We Were Birds by Joe Wilkins.</p><p>This is the beginning of a three part series centering around the batkids in a world with no super heroes, and how they manage to find family in each other. I've been working on this story for the past year or so, and it means a lot to me, so I hope you enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was 10pm on a Tuesday, when Damian and his mother finally got to Bludhaven. It wasn't really all that different from Gotham, just another gray city with gray buildings and narrow streets, the same sorts of people breathing the same smog filled air, the same ever present feeling of dread growing from the cracks in the sidewalk. And for the first time since Damian could remember, he and his mother were staying in an apartment building.</p><p>Tonight, though, he didn't dare complain. Not about the long bus drive, or the back-alley neighborhood they found themselves in, or how she insisted on holding his hand the whole way there. His mother was silent enough to deafen the entire city, and her silence could not be argued with. Damian knew that he had failed her.</p><p>They hauled their suitcase up the stairs to the third floor, and walked past a row of identical white doors until they found apartment number 15. Inside, there was a small kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom down the hall, and a yellow sofa in the middle of it all. The overhead lights washed the rest of the living space yellow, making the bare white walls look almost green. Damian's vision was suddenly blurry. His mother locked the door and shut the blinds on the window, before kneeling in front of him and wiping his eyes.</p><p>"There's nothing to cry about," she said. Her hands were cold on his cheeks, and her nails were the same deep green of her eyes. </p><p>His mother always said that he got her color, but that the shape of his eyes belonged to someone else.</p><p>Damian thought that after finally meeting his father his parents would get back together, but all he got out of it was guilt and disappointment and a rumbling quiet that settled deep in his stomach and scratched at his throat. He knew he let his father down. He knew his mother was angry with him. "There's nothing to cry about," she said again. "Your father is a fool. That is all. Do you understand?"</p><p>Damian nodded.</p><p>"Good," she nodded back. "We'll talk some more in the morning. For now, go get ready for bed."</p><p>Damian nodded again. His mother ran her hand through his hair, then got up and disappeared into the bathroom. Across from it, the bedroom was empty save for a bed, a dresser, and a shelf. There was one window, facing an inky and starless sky, and Damian was quick to close it and shut the blinds. There was nothing worthwhile to look at here, anyway.</p><p>The water started running in the next room, a smooth noise that broke the stuffiness of the apartment, and Damian pulled out clean beddings from the suitcase. They learned, rather early on, not to hang on to much and to only carry around necessities, things they could pack easily into a single bag in case they ever had to make a quick leave. Still, his mother allowed him his books and notebooks, as well as a pencil set she got him from the first crafts store they stumbled upon in America, now lying at the bottom of the suitcase. He left them there, tucked under a couple of dress shirts, and took out a switchblade instead. He set it on top of the dresser, and then changed into his sleep wear. He thought about his father once more, and this time he refused to cry. He let himself feel angry instead, so much the entire city turned mute in his head. He listened to the running water until it stopped, and that night his mother slept beside him.</p><p>In the morning, they talked.</p><p>Their stay in Bludhaven will not take any more than six months. That is the amount of time it will take his mother to tie up any loose ends left in the U.S, and in April they will head out to Argentina. They've been going by his mother's maternal family name for the last couple of years, but they will have to change it again before moving. Now that they had money again, the rest was paperwork.</p><p>There was no point in unpacking, but Damian carefully folded a couple shirts into the dresser anyway. He restacked his backpack with basic supplies for emergencies, placed it by the door next to his shoes. The three notebooks he had, the last one being an actual journal with leather binding and an attached bookmark, he arranged on the shelf along with his books. He put the pencil set on the dresser, next to the knife.</p><p>In the bathroom there was a bathtub and a sink with a framed mirror balanced between the wall and the faucet. Damian drew a frowny face on the condensation creeping on the mirror, and figured that at least the water was running hot.</p><p>He went through worse six months in his life.</p><p>*</p><p>When Damian was seven, his mother taught him how to fight. He learned to aim his kicks and punches below the waist or at the head and neck, and to use his size to his advantage. Elbows and knees were sometimes just as useful as a knife, but he made sure to always carry around his switchblade anyway. He was told, more times than he could remember, that the important part was to get away quickly, and to run before anyone had the chance to catch him. It wasn’t about winning. But holding a knife came as naturally as breathing, and Damian wanted to win.</p><p>They spent their first two days in Bludhaven going over all the lessons again. It was a tedious ordeal, but his mother insisted on it every time they moved locations, and wouldn't let him outside until he proved he was capable of defending himself. She was a tough teacher to please, and a tougher opponent to beat. </p><p>In a different life, his mother used to be a professional fencer. One time she agreed to show him the correct positions and hand movements used in a match, then fought him with a broom as an improvised foil and finished him in two strikes. Damian knew, then, that she liked to win too.</p><p>As evening rolled around they checked again that the door was locked and the blinds were drawn, before shutting all the lights off and heading to bed. The dark ceiling over their heads looked just like the sky on the other side of the window, and Damian's mother stroked her fingers through his hair like she used to do when he was very small and they were still living with his grandfather. Back then he would fall asleep in her bed as she told him stories about Alexander the Great, almost like they were lullabies. The Gordian Knot and the taming of Bucephalus, the thousands of battles won and the greatness one man was born to achieve. How Damian was named after the legends told of a brilliant leader, and was destined to become one himself.</p><p>Tonight, a lifetime away, she told him about the future.</p><p>“We won’t have to move ever again, when this is all over," she said. Her voice was like velvet, from up close, and Damian could feel her breath on his cheek. "We will have new names and a big house with a garden. I could show you how to grow vegetables, or we could grow flowers. We could pay someone to grow flowers for us.”</p><p>"Petunias would be nice. Can I have a dog?”</p><p>“You can have how many dogs you want.”</p><p>“Will you teach me how to fight with a real sword?” he asked. “Can I have a real sword?”</p><p>Damian could hear the smile on her lips when she answered. "It would only be fair. I had one, when I was your age."</p><p>"We could have a library, too. And we should buy more art supplies. Like canvases and acrylics, maybe watercolors."</p><p>"Will you paint me birds, my dear?"</p><p>"I will paint you birds."</p><p>They lay in silence for a few seconds, then. Damian thought that his father had a house with a garden and a library and a dog, too. He had strangers he called family and orphans he called sons. But Damian knew better than to voice any of this out loud.</p><p>“I love you, Damian," his mother said.</p><p>“I love you, too,” he whispered back.</p><p>“I love you the most," she finished. "No one will ever love you more than me.”</p><p>*</p><p>Damian left the apartment one late Sunday, when his mother was off taking care of some unfinished business back in Gotham. The exact meaning of this business trip he didn't know, and his mother wasn't too eager to share, but Damian accepted the news with relief regardless. He knew not to ask questions, if it meant he won't be asked any either. He earned the right to sneak out, anyway.</p><p>Bludhaven was still nasty, a week later.</p><p>It was nearing midnight but the streets, surprisingly enough, were more empty than not. There was one person sleeping in a car, another person walking a dog. Most lights were turned off, in the windows, and no one paid any mind to one kid. Damian had his bag on his back and his knife in his pocket, and he almost wished for a reason to use it. But the sky was black and the streets were empty and Bludhaven was silent.</p><p>In the month he stayed with his father, Damian spent most of his days sketching the big tree in the yard. It was so big, he could see it from almost every window in the house, and its dark branches were like long crooked fingers reaching out into the street. He didn't know how many versions of the same tree existed in his notebook, but he must've gotten it from every possible angle. From the second story windows he could always spot a few birds, usually pigeons or woodpeckers, and he did some study sketches of those too. Some birds even stayed still long enough for him to shade the feathers, and one time he saw a squirrel. There were no birds around at night, though, and no trees in this part of town, where not even the streetlights were working.</p><p>Damian was angry, but at this point it felt more like a state of being. He thought about how some people were born to be great, and how he should've been one of them.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. October (Richard Grayson)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Despite the underwhelming nature of Bludhaven City, Damian found himself sneaking out twice more before his mother caught up with his lies and locked him in the bathroom.</p><p>He told himself the reason for his return to the streets was to familiarize himself with them. His mother always insisted he memorize maps and street layouts of locations they've stayed in, so wanting to see the nooks and crannies of the city in person shouldn't be unexpected. It proved itself helpful before, befriending subway systems and bus schedules, taking a look at what the local crowds looked like. He told himself he was preparing himself for worst case scenarios. They've had many of those, in the past.</p><p>He refused to admit, to himself or to his mother, that in truth it felt like the city was waiting for him. That it wanted a fight just as much as he did.</p><p>It's been an hour and a half. The bathroom lightswitch was on the other side of the door, so Damian was left to sit in the darkness. He stared at the window, too small to squeeze out of, and the little light the fading evening outside offered. He considered finishing all the hot water while he was waiting for the door to unlock, but decided he shouldn't anger his mother any further. Her continued silence was unnerving.</p><p>Just when he thought he's gonna spend the rest of the night looking at the sink, he heard the lock click. When the door finally opened, he was met not with his mother's anger but with what could almost be described as pride. There was an odd sense of satisfaction in her eyes, and Damian realised she was impressed with him. Never before did he manage to do something behind her back, twice.</p><p>He stood up to face her. This time, it felt less like asking for permission and more like presenting a challenge.</p><p>"Five hours," she said. "Not a minute later. Don't go anywhere unarmed."</p><p>"I'm not stupid."</p><p>"Prove it, then."</p><p>They stared at each other for another moment, before his mother stepped aside and let him through. She watched from the hallway as he gathered his bag, switchblade and watch. He still felt her eyes like daggers at the back of his head when he walked out, slamming the door after himself.</p><p>It was only 11pm.</p><p>He looked up at the window of their apartment bedroom, the only one visible from this side of the street. It was closed shut, and the blinds were drawn. On the other side of the road, a man was breaking into a car and a cat sat perched on a mailbox, staring at Damian with eyes as big as the moon. A block or two away the neighborhood turned into nothing but alleyways, but Damian already knew which route to take to get to the city center. Whether this was a chance or a challenge, he will take it.</p><p>He walked for what must have been an hour, before ending up in a little sitting area next to a closed ice cream shop. The sign over the door introduced the place as The Flavor Village in large pink letters, and a pair of sneakers were hanging over the V like some sort of lame omen. In the distance Damian could hear noise bleeding into the night, but the only place open on this street was a convenience store around the corner. Whatever fight he's been storing in his body all day suddenly went away, and he sat down at one of the tables. He pulled his bag off his back and took out his notebook.</p><p>He flipped through the first ten pages of trees, then the doves and pigeons and woodpeckers. There was a dog, here and there, and one page dedicated to lady bugs. Now a pair of sneakers joined them, hanging from the corner of the page by their laces. </p><p>Damian thought about Gotham, and his mother, and Argentina. About what kind of dog they will get, and what it means, to finally stop running. He remembered one time, three or four years ago, when his mother came back home looking disheveled and panicked like he's never seen her before. They packed all of their belongings in fifteen minutes and were on a plane out of the country the next day. Another time, after staying in Canada for less than two months, they got a visit from a woman working for a child services program. She asked a lot of questions Damian didn't know how to answer, and they quietly moved again a week later. The first time Damian was really scared happened one night when his mother returned from a trip to the laundermout with a stab wound, and locked herself in their bathroom for two days. She stitched and bandaged herself, and refused to go to the hospital. By the end of that weekend, both the shower and their laundry were stained red, and by the end of the month they were gone. At the time Damian didn't understand. He still wasn't sure he did. They were running away from the Al Ghul name, but sometimes it seemed like there was something else after them too.</p><p>The sneakers on the page turned sour, once he tried to shade one of them. He closed the notebook before he could be tempted to throw the whole thing to the trash, and looked up at the ice cream sign with a frown. On the other side of the street, a man in a police uniform rounded the corner from the convenience store with what looked like a can of coke in one hand. Damian jolted up, and only then noticed the police car parked on the side of the road. This was not a mistake Damian was allowed to make, and not one his mother would allow him to forget. He picked up his things from the table and was ready to book it, when he caught the name written on the man's uniform.</p><p>Grayson was a name Damian's heard more times than he could count, back in Gotham, but he's only really seen the man's face once. He recognized it now, though, a sight straight out of a toothpaste commercial. He didn't look like the hero they made him out to be, but then again, neither did his father.</p><p>Richard Grayson noticed him before he had the chance to run.</p><p>"Hey, kid," he called from the other side of the street. "What are you doing out so late? Everything okay?"</p><p>Damian didn't answer. On a second look, he noticed the man was actually holding a canned coffee drink, which was disgusting.</p><p>"Do you have anywhere to go?"</p><p>He began approaching, then, but stopped when Damian took a step back. They stood across from each other, barely two feet between them and a table directly behind Damian's back. He held onto his bag like a vice, and before the officer could say anything else he sprung forward with his switchblade.</p><p>Grayson stepped back, surprised, but managed to catch Damian's hand before he could make a stab at him. Damian in turn stomped on his foot and dodged under his arm. Cold coffee spilled all over the both of them, and he heard swearing behind him, but at that point Damian was already gone.</p><p>When he got back to the apartment building, it was only 2am. His hands and hoodie were sticky from coffee, and he was sweating despite it being cold enough for his fingers to lose feeling. He did succeed in keeping his bag dry, though, and no one has followed him on his way back, so that was one thing less to worry about. Damian let himself linger outside the building for a minute or two. He propped himself up against the wall and watched his breaths turn into little clouds in the cold air. </p><p>He couldn't count himself victorious, tonight. He was almost too tired to care.</p><p>Eventually Damian had to get up and go inside. He climbed up the stairs to the third floor, and knocked on the door of their apartment. He wasn't given a key, in the aftermath of the fight. His mother opened the door after what felt like years in his head, but couldn't have been more than a minute. Damian couldn't tell whether he felt relieved or scared, going back to his mother looking this worn and disheveled and smelling like sweat and coffee. She looked him over, and her face betrayed nothing of what was going through her head.</p><p>After a moment of deafening silence she placed a hand on his shoulder and guided him inside, locking the door after him. She stroked his hair, gentle, and didn't seem to mind that it was stiff with dried up sweat. Damian wondered if he failed in her eyes, too. If he will be allowed outside after tonight.</p><p>"Go wash up," she told him. And he went.</p><p>He took his time, in the bathroom, thankful that he didn’t finish all the hot water out of pettiness earlier that day. But even once the feeling came back to his fingers and toes and his ears were stinging red, he couldn’t shake off the terrible foreboding fear stuck in his throat. His mother’s blank face was still there, when he closed his eyes. He clenched his hands so they wouldn’t tremble, and threw his dirty clothes in a heap on the floor. They will need to wash them tomorrow.</p><p>He changed in the bedroom, and when he looked through his bag he noticed his new notebook was missing.</p><p>*</p><p>Only in the early morning did Damian realise those five hours were most likely less of a challenge and more of a calculated risk. He knew his mother was never one to wear her intentions on her sleeve, but looking into her eyes was just like looking at his own, and he knew that giving him what he wanted was just another way of keeping him close. That same night, lying in bed unable to sleep, his mother held his hand between hers and told him she was proud. Her palms were warm against his cold skin, and Damian felt all of his worries melt away for just a moment. Really, he should have been angry.</p><p>But even if she did win, that didn't mean he'd lost.</p><p>Now he was allowed out by himself, five hours at a time, and that had to be enough. He needed to return to that ice cream shop and fix the mistakes his unnecessary and reckless behavior caused, preferably without his mother finding out about any of it. </p><p>Damian knew they could buy a thousand more notebooks once April comes and goes, but allowed himself to admit that he wanted that notebook, with all its birds and trees as they were. It was one of few things that were really his, and the only thing he actually wanted to remember from New Jersey.</p><p>The ice cream shop was open the following evening. The shoes were gone, and the tables outside were full. It was getting too cold for ice cream, but it seemed like nobody in Bludhaven cared. There were kids his own age among all the other people, running around between their parents’ legs, but they looked to him like something else.</p><p>Damian couldn't find his notebook anywhere.</p><p>He sat down on the side of the road and stared at the asphalt for what felt like a really long time. His fingers turned numb with the cold and the air hurt his throat on its way down to his lungs, and Damian let himself drown in his anger.</p><p>Then, a pair of black shoes appeared in front of him and someone held up a red cased notebook under his nose. Damian looked up.</p><p>"You dropped this," Richard Grayson said. Damian stared at him for a long second, then snatched the notebook out of his hand and quickly flipped through the pages. All his sketches were still safely tucked inside, the bookmark resting on the ladybug study page like he left it. Damian held onto the book so hard he could almost feel his hands shaking, and looked up with a scowl. Grayson held up his hands in a show of surrender. "I'm just here to return it. Those are some nice drawings."</p><p>Damian narrowed his eyes at him, but eventually just looked back down. He flipped through the pages one more time, and then again for good measure. The shoes remained standing on the asphalt in front of him.</p><p>"You're Bruce's kid, aren't you?" Grayson asked.</p><p>"No."</p><p>"Hmm. Does your mom know you're here?"</p><p>"Yes."</p><p>After a moment the man sat down on the ground next to him, and Damian frowned deeper into his notebook. It was open on one of the pages with the tree, this one a study of the branches seen from the second floor bedroom window, and when Grayson saw it he laughed. "Man, I remember that old thing," he said. "I'm pretty sure this tree is older than Alfred. I used to climb it all the time when I was a kid, and only fell down like twice. Did break my arm both times, though."</p><p>Damian gritted his teeth, refusing to look up. There were too many people around and no reason to be rash.</p><p>"You like ice cream?" Grayson went on. Damian closed the notebook and didn't answer. "Yeah, no, you're right, it's way too cold for that. Hang on."</p><p>He got up again and crossed the street. When he came back, he was holding two cans of grape soda in one hand. He offered one to Damian, and set it down on the sidewalk next to him when he didn't take it. Grayson sat back down, and popped his drink open. And then they sat in each other's silence for a very long time, until the ice cream shop closed at 11pm.</p><p>Damian picked up the soda can, and it was still cold. The metal lid was sealed shut so there was no way Grayson managed to put anything inside. He clicked it open.</p><p>"Do you have anywhere to stay?" Grayson asked again.</p><p>"Yes," Damian answered.</p><p>"Then you better get going. They promised rain tonight, and you seem a little underdressed for the season."</p><p>He looked at him then, and Richard Grayson's eyes were a clear-sky blue. The clouds above looked more like a stormy gray, but that was just Bludhaven. Damian stood up and put his notebook back into his bag, then walked away without saying anything more.</p><p>He drank the soda on his way back to the apartment. It was too sweet.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. November, December (Any Storm Will Do)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Damian's mother told him she used to live in Buenos Aires when she was young and in love. His father would come stay with her in La Boca every other week, and they would go dancing or visit the theater or just walk alongside the river. Grandfather wouldn't have allowed her to date an American man, so she didn't tell him, and life was good. But it was easy to be in love when they were tourists and her father was paying for her expenses, the same way it was easy to miss Nanda Parbat when it wasn't breathing down her neck.</p><p>Their new identification documents named them Myra Talia Fruelaz and Damian Fruelaz, and according to his ID card Damian was just shy of ten instead of eleven. His mother had more paperwork he didn't understand stacked up neatly on the kitchen counter next to her laptop, about housing and money and everything that came with the death of the Al Ghul name. She told him that Belgrano wasn't La Boca, but that loving would be just as easy this time around.</p><p>Just six more months.</p><p>Damian came by the ice cream place next to the city center a few more times in the following week. The weather got colder, and with the first snowfall of the season the number of people out after sundown got fewer. Grayson too was nowhere to be found, and Damian tried and failed to convince himself that wasn't the reason he kept coming back.</p><p>He could never really get used to the cold in the east coast. Snow always sounded nicer in theory, when it didn't soak through his clothes and freeze him through his shoes. Winter in New Jersey hurt his throat and made his eyes water, and there was nothing particularly wonder-like about it. Tonight, as the snow settled and created a bright sheen on the otherwise gloomy demeanor of the city, Damian was already regretting wearing only two sweatshirts.</p><p>He walked by the park, where the streetlights were yellow and the snow was cleared from the stone trail, and past a playground and an elementary school until he found himself in a gas station next to a Red Robin joint. The place was empty save for a couple of employees and one car parked out front, with Richard Grayson sitting cross legged on the hood. </p><p>He was out of uniform, wearing jeans and a bomber jacket over a hoodie, worn out sneakers and an ugly purple hat with three whole pom poms attached to it. There was a bag of half eaten takeout sitting next to him, and his eyes were fixed on his phone. He looked tired like Damian hasn't seen him before, the poor lighting making him look all too pale and faded.</p><p>Damian crossed the street over to the parking lot, and Grayson looked up when he noticed him approaching. He stilled, but didn't seem surprised, blinking at Damian like his arrival was just as expected as the turn in weather. </p><p>Damian straightened his back. "Grayson."</p><p>"You can call me Dick."</p><p>"No."</p><p>They stared at each other. Grayson looked him over like he was trying to find something off in the details of his face, but the only thing there was a red nose and a frown. He held up a bag of fries. "Want some?"</p><p>There was a beat of silence, before Damian reluctantly took a handful of fries and climbed up the hood to sit next to him. Grayson smiled at him, like he was allowed to, and Damian frowned some more.</p><p>"Graduated from Flavor Village, did you?" Grayson said. "I can get some more fries if you want."</p><p>"Why does he have so many of them?"</p><p>Grayson blinked. "What?"</p><p>Damian crossed his arms, and turned to stare at his shoes. "What's the point of playing house with a bunch of orphans when he already has a real son?" He asked.</p><p>There was a short pause, followed by a deep sigh. Grayson leaned back against the windshield. "Damian, is it?" He asked. Damian allowed himself a short nod, but refused to look up at him. He sighed again. "Bruce has been my dad longer than you've been alive, kid. I get that you're upset and I can't really tell you not to be, but… listen, I don't know what happened between Bruce and your mom, but it has nothing to do with Tim or Jason or Cass, okay?"</p><p>Damian didn't say anything. He kept staring at his shoes, and his whole face felt numb.</p><p>"You know," Grayson continued. "I remember when Bruce and Talia were dating, and he was flying out to see her like five times a week. He wanted to have kids with her. To have you."</p><p>"Well, he doesn't anymore."</p><p>He went silent, at that. Damian was almost glad for it, but then again he really wasn't. Then Grayson's phone vibrated on the car between them and Damian looked over to see there was a chat still open on the screen.</p><p>"Who's that?" He asked.</p><p>Grayson looked down at his phone, distracted. "Oh, that's just Babs."</p><p>Damian made a face. "Is she your girlfriend?"</p><p>Grayson took a second to answer, looking contemplative. He picked up the phone and turned off the sound. "No," he ended up saying. "We're friends. She lives in Gotham."</p><p>"Gotham's gross. I hate it."</p><p>"Hey, it's not that bad," Grayson said. "I've lived there most of my life, so I know the best places to go for pizza. And the best places to, uh, draw birds or whatever it is you do."</p><p>"I study them. New York or Chicago?"</p><p>"Huh?"</p><p>"Pizza."</p><p>"Oh, nothing beats New York."</p><p>"I like Chicago."</p><p>He laughed. "Don't let anyone in Bludhaven hear you say that, they'll have your head."</p><p>"I'll have theirs first."</p><p>Grayson smiled even bigger at that, his laughter turning into smoke in the cold air, and Damian was taken aback. His cheeks dimpled, and when he looked at Damian it was almost like he meant it.</p><p>They kept eating fries until they turned cold and their fingers were covered in grease and salt. Grayson kept talking about Gotham, but Damian didn't mind. He spent the better part of an hour just sitting with him. By the end of it they were left with an empty paper bag and a quiet that was simple. The snow looked like something else, under the gas station lights, and the cold burned like peppermint. The silence was interrupted with Damian sneezing three times in a row.</p><p>Grayson took off his hat and put it on Damian’s head. “No wonder you caught a cold, kiddo. You should dress warmer.”</p><p>Damian pouted, and stuck his hands in his pockets. “I should head back.”</p><p>“Want me to give you a ride?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>He slid off the hood of the car, and took off the hat to hand it back. Grayson looked at his outstretched hand with furrowed brows. “You can keep it,” he told him.</p><p>“I can’t,” Damian said.</p><p>Grayson’s eyes suddenly seemed very tired again, and his lips thinned into a tight line. After another second he accepted the hat back, then looked up with a smile. "I'll be night patrolling this Tuesday, in case you feel like running around with a knife at 2am again."</p><p>Damian pulled his hood over his head, and shoved his hands back in his pockets. He smiled back, just barely.</p><p>"Noted."</p><p>*</p><p>November ended just as quickly as it had begun, but December wasn't really much different.</p><p>Damian's mother still went out every other night, returning in the morning with war behind her eyes and then staying up for days working on her laptop. She still slept in the same bed as him, with one hand on the back of his head and the other on his arm, and still spent hours in the bathroom every evening, the sound of running water almost comforting in the backdrop of the apartment. At times Damian would spot her lying back in the bathtub with her eyes closed and her hair floating in the water around her, and think about the bloody shower floor and the stained bathroom tiles. The scar from the stab wound she had right over her right hip bone. It was one of many others scattered on her back and arms, and didn't look much different from the ones she got from Grandfather.</p><p>They still locked the doors and shut the windows, and the sky was still black and empty. The only thing different was that there were no birds to draw anymore.</p><p>Grayson became a constant, existing right at the edge of everything Bludhaven. He talked about Gotham the way Damian's mother talked about Nanda Parbat, and rambled on about snowy days like a child. One time, when Damian dared to ask, he told him about his father. He asked Damian if he has anywhere to go, and bought him a grape soda. It was too sweet, still.</p><p>Grayson said he was going back home for the holidays, so he won't be around during the week leading up to Christmas. He said it like Gotham deserved to be called that, like it wasn't little more than a house full of noise and a tree he once fell from. It made Damian feel angry in a way he couldn't explain.</p><p>They didn't do holidays, Damian and his mother. Even when they still lived with Grandfather, celebrations and birthdays and anniversaries were something that belonged to other people. It was one of the things that didn't change once they left, like the way his mother still painted her nails shades of green and blue or the way they switched back to Arabic when no one was around to hear. When Damian was six or seven he discovered Christmas with all of its flashy commercialism, and wasn't too impressed. It was too cold for whatever they were trying to sell, and America seemed so far away from him. This Christmas Eve they spent in their Bludhaven apartment, washed yellow and stripped bare. And they didn't do holidays, but that night his mother made curry. They sat together on their yellow couch in their yellow living room and talked about having a lemon tree, or an herb garden, or growing Petunias so pink they almost look purple. His mother wanted to buy a car and a pair of fencing foils they could hang on the wall, maybe even a Katana or a Shamshir.</p><p>Damian tried not to ask about what it was like to call a place home and hate it, if it felt anything like the last six years. He thought about a life he could barely remember and another he couldn't have, the tree in the front yard he never got to climb. He tried not to ask if they could celebrate Christmas, next year, just once. His mother told him she loves him the most, and he knew it meant she was the only one who ever will.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. December (Dick Grayson)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dick loved New Jersey in December. Traveling with his parents as a kid, they spent most winters in Florida with the rest of Haley’s Circus, and to him snowy days were something that only really existed on TV. His first Christmas after his parents were gone and Hayley’s closed down wasn’t all bad, even if just for the snow angels he spent all afternoon making. Today still, Gotham was his in the most honest sense of the word, and coming back home was like learning how to breathe again.</p>
<p>He arrived at Gotham on a Tuesday morning, greeted by barking before he could even make it inside. No one bothered to clear out the snow in the yard or on the stairs outside the door, and Dick managed to drag most of it with him when coming in. The wet floorboards were forgotten, though, as soon as he was pulled into a bone crushing hug. And Bruce had the best smile, when he meant it.</p>
<p>The Christmas tree stood in the middle of the living room looking like something out of a hallmark movie about finding love in a strawberry farm in Nebraska, decorated with shiny glass ornaments and priceless little figurines passed down through generations in the Wayne family. The menorah on the coffee table was also something pristine and silver, three colorful candles already standing at the ready, not yet lit. It belonged to Martha Wayne, once upon a time. </p>
<p>Holidays at home always had an undertone of loss. It was a house full of people who have lost their culture at a young age, and were now holding onto scraps of it with slippery fingers. A large part of the Jewish traditions Bruce’s family used to have died more than thirty years ago, along with both of his parents. Tim’s parents were secular, so he didn’t have a lot to contribute. Cass didn’t even know what her ethnicity was, and Dick’s parents tried so hard to forget their own.</p>
<p>So they did a watered down version of both holidays, with a tree and a menorah and presents, but not much beyond that. Alfred always made a holiday dinner for Christmas Eve and refused help from anyone else, so it was likely he’ll spend most of the day in the kitchen. Catherine did insist on bringing a casserole this year, though.</p>
<p>The rest of the morning was spent drying the wet floor at the front door and shoveling snow out of the entryway and stairs outside. Tim had a habit of sleeping late into the afternoon, so Dick didn't get the chance to see him until Jason arrived with Catherine towards two o'clock. He spotted them just as they were getting out of their car, Catherine carrying two glass containers and Jason helping with her bags. He didn’t have his crutch with him, so it looked like despite the weather he was having one of his better days. Jason gave Dick a pat on the shoulder before heading into the kitchen to greet Alfred and inevitably get kicked out to the living room, and in a weird way he almost looked grown up. His hair seemed to have been recently cut, and some time when Dick wasn’t looking he gained a few inches on him. He smiled more freely, too, in a way that scrunched up his eyes and showed his teeth.</p>
<p>In the evening, they set the table and lit the candles. A few more packages in colorful wrapping paper joined the tree in the living room, and Tim reemerged with a dress shirt Bruce made him change into and a half-hearted frown on his face. Stephanie and Cass were still in Hong Kong, or Moscow, or Berlin. Dick honestly had a hard time following. He knew Bruce missed having them around, though, and that Tim spent the entire evening texting them.</p>
<p>Traditions weren't a very persistent thing, in this family, even if they were very much a Wayne thing to do. Inconsistencies were almost a way of life, with the Hanukkah lights that came out of a birthday candles box and with Tim and Bruce facetiming Cass halfway through the meal. When Dick was a kid all he ever did was watch Christmas movies on TV and wish he could have whatever suburban American dream they were trying to sell him. Gotham was good, even if it wasn't exactly it. Between gloomy winters and gloomy summers, he could still drag his brothers outside to make snow angels all afternoon.</p>
<p>Sometime around 3am, Dick found Tim lying on the floor in the library. He has changed back into his Skate-or-Die hoodie and was wearing a pair of too long pajama bottoms, with his laptop open over his stomach and a book open over his face. Dick turned on the lights on his way in, and nudged Tim in his side with a foot. He peeked out from behind the book with tired eyes.</p>
<p>"'Sup," Dick said.</p>
<p>"Nothing much," Tim replied.</p>
<p>"You know there's two armchairs like ten feet away from you, right?"</p>
<p>"I think better when I'm horizontal," Tim said, and put the book back on his face. "Senior year is kicking my ass."</p>
<p>Dick laughed, and sat down on the floor next to him. The library room had nice carpeting, colored a deep red that turned soft under the dim orange lights. He used to like doing cartwheels around the room, when he was a kid, and came close to knocking over the shelves more times than he could count. No book was ever actually damaged, but it still drove Bruce insane. Dick picked up the book from Tim's face and read the title cover. High school world history.</p>
<p>"I have an essay due, like, a week ago," Tim said. "I'd have Steph help me, but she's cheating on me with tourist traps in Japan. How could I ever hope to compete with anime?"</p>
<p>"I'd offer my help, but I don't think you want it," Dick said distractingly, flipping through the book. History was more up Jason's alley, and Dick was never a very good student anyway. He put it down on the floor next to him, out of Tim's reach. "Did you start looking into colleges yet?"</p>
<p>"Stephanie and I were planning on New York," Tim said. "She got a scholarship at NYU, and there's a bunch of good computer science programs I can apply to."</p>
<p>"I didn't know about that, what is she gonna major in?"</p>
<p>"I dunno, arts and crafts?"</p>
<p>Dick snorted, and Tim finally sat up. He closed his laptop with a sigh and ruffled a hand through his hair, messing it up some more. It was getting long, falling over his ears and curling on the back of his neck, but at least he brushed it today.</p>
<p>This year was Tim's third round of holidays in the Wayne house, and now he was almost eighteen. He had only a few more months left as a foster kid before Bruce could legally adopt him, but Dick knew better than to bring that up.</p>
<p>"Did you see Jack this month?" He asked instead.</p>
<p>Tim sighed again. "Yeah," he said. "He gave me some cash for the holiday, I was thinking of buying a new camera. Dana got me headphones."</p>
<p>"Do you wanna talk about it?"</p>
<p>"Not really." Dick gave him a disapproving look, but Tim just ignored it. "How's Bludhaven?"</p>
<p>Dick frowned at him, but after a moment reluctantly accepted the change in subject. "More of the same," he said, before reconsidering. "Actually, I did want to talk to you about something."</p>
<p>"Hmm?"</p>
<p>"I happened to run into Talia's son a few weeks back."</p>
<p>There was a beat of silence. Then, "What? You mean the Al Ghul kid?"</p>
<p>"Yeah."</p>
<p>Tim was suddenly wide awake, looking at him with big eyes. "What are they doing in Bludhaven?" he asked, then shook his head. "You should stay away from them, Dick. They're bad news."</p>
<p>"That's the thing, I don't think I should."</p>
<p>Tim set his laptop to the side and turned to face Dick. Somehow, even with the dark bags under his eyes and the penguin-themed pajama pants, he managed to look dead serious. "You heard what happened," he said. "Talia was planning on using Bruce and bailing. Trying to help them was a mistake."</p>
<p>"I know," Dick said. "I know… Talia, okay? But the kid's, what? Ten or something?"</p>
<p>"Does it really matter?"</p>
<p>"Talia manipulated Bruce and straight up tried to steal from him, why should we trust her with a ten year old?" Dick asked, but all he got in return was an uncertain look. He sighed. "I thought he was some homeless kid at first. I tried to talk to him and he pulled a knife on me. I'm just saying I'm concerned, okay? I mean, who lets a ten year old run around the streets at night with a knife?"</p>
<p>"I used to do that all the time," a voice came from the door. "Kids love sharp objects.”</p>
<p>They looked up to see Jason standing at the door, a half sized can of Pringles in one hand. His hair was tousled like he just woke up, and he was wearing a pair of sweatpants along with a very ugly sweater Catherine got him. Tim frowned at him.</p>
<p>"Of course you did," he deadpanned. "Are those Pringles?"</p>
<p>"You can't have any," Jason said. He walked over to their spot on the floor. "What are we talking about?"</p>
<p>"The Al Ghul kid tried to stab Dick."</p>
<p>Dick pouted at Tim, who in return just rolled his eyes. Jason used Dick's shoulder to lower himself down to sit next to them, and put the Pringles where Tim couldn't reach them. He laughed, "The mini Bruce? The same kid who stole your inhaler?"</p>
<p>"Shut up, Jason, it's not funny," Tim said.</p>
<p>"It's kinda funny," Jason said back. "So what's the deal? Dickface got a babysitting gig?"</p>
<p>"I'm keeping an eye on him," Dick said, and grabbed the Pringles before Jason could snatch them back. He shoved a handful into his mouth.</p>
<p>"Stop being gross," Jason said.</p>
<p>"Stop being an idiot," Tim said. "Jason, you're not allowed to disagree with me on this."</p>
<p>"Fuck off, Tim."</p>
<p>"Listen," Dick started, and got hit by Jason for talking with his mouth full. He took a second to swallow, and continued. "I get where you're coming from, Tim, but I'm talking about a literal child here. I've met kids like him who needed help before, and I want to make sure he's okay."</p>
<p>Tim didn't say anything, but he pressed his lips into a thin line and redirected his eyes to the bookshelves, like he might just find the perfect answer on the spine of one of Bruce's hardcovers. Whatever he was thinking, it was hard to read it on his face.</p>
<p>"Do we know anything about how they ended up in the U.S to begin with?" Jason asked, looking between the two of them. Tim slouched forward, dropping his shoulders, and gave a short nod.</p>
<p>"From what I got, Talia isn't on speaking terms with the rest of her family anymore," he said. "She lost all her money and leverage, so she came looking for it in Gotham."</p>
<p>“And what are they doing in Bludhaven?”</p>
<p>“That’s the question."</p>
<p>With that it seemed like they've reached some sort of dead end, and they all went quiet. Tim continued to stare holes into the carpet, and Jason kept munching on chips. From the window on the opposite wall Dick could spot the outline of the tree in the front yard like it was an old friend, and tried to remember if he knew the name of it. The stars overhead were all but nonexistent.</p>
<p>“Here’s my take on things,” Jason said eventually. He put the can down, and folded his arms over his knees. “I was a street kid even before my mom got hospitalised for the first time, and it's not like the foster system did any good once they got involved. It ain’t easy going out there. Kids slip away, when you’re not looking. You gotta pay attention.”</p>
<p>Tim sighed. “Jason-”</p>
<p>“Don’t give me any of your shit, Timmers," Jason snapped at him. "You nearly died.”</p>
<p>Tim went quiet, at that. Dick pursed his lips. “I don’t trust Talia," he repeated.</p>
<p>“At least we agree on something,” Tim said in defeat. “Listen, just be careful, okay?”</p>
<p>They looked at each other, then, for what felt like a very long time. It was all very familiar, the intensity of Tim's stare and the air of undeserved admiration tied to it, when that stare was directed at Dick. They've only been brothers for four or so years, but it almost felt like they've known each other their entire lives.</p>
<p>“Well, I think it’s past my bedtime,” Jason drawled. He tossed the Pringles at Tim, who peered inside the can with a frown. “Can one of you help me up?”</p>
<p>Dick got up and gave Jason a hand. “You should go to sleep too, Tim," he said. "If you’re still here in ten minutes world history isn't gonna be the only one kicking your ass.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, yeah," Tim rolled his eyes. "Goodnight."</p>
<p>When Dick passed by the library on his way back from Jason's room, the lights were turned off and Tim's laptop was carefully set on one of the armchairs. He picked up the can of Pringles still lying on the floor, and went to bed.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Dick's old room had a window facing the back yard, where two graves stared back at him fondly and the ground was covered in ghostly snow. On his last morning home Martha and Thomas Wayne were sleeping in the cold earth, holding hands in death, and Dick was packing his things.</p>
<p>There were still some posters on the wall, left behind from his teenage years, and the CD collection he never bothered to take with him sat neatly in the closet. The bedsheets were red and green, because when he was ten he told Bruce and Alfred those were his favorite colors, and there were still clothes carefully folded in the closet drawers. His suitcase and duffle bag were a mess of clothes at his feet. </p>
<p>The first time Dick left this house, he left it angry. Now every time he came back he felt foolish.</p>
<p>There was a knock behind him, and Dick turned around to see Bruce standing at the open door to the room. It was early enough that he still had stubble lining his jaw, and he was wearing the Christmas socks Catherine got him. He looked like a fish out of water. </p>
<p>"How's it going, champ?" he asked.</p>
<p>"Alright," Dick said, distracted. Bruce came inside and glanced over his shoulder at the window, before raising an eyebrow at his messy suitcase and the vomit of clothes on the floor. Dick ignored him. "Thinking if I should take the CDs with me this time. I kinda miss music being inconvenient."</p>
<p>"Oh, but what will Alfred do without your pirated Abba albums?" Bruce asked, and Dick smacked him in the shoulder. He just laughed, a content little thing.</p>
<p>There was a stretch of silence after that, threading itself between the cuffs of their sleeves and forming some sort of elaborate tension. Dick thought about Kory, who's disco obsession still dominated a corner of his childhood room's closet, and wondered what corner of Bruce's life was housing the memory of Talia Al Ghul. </p>
<p>Dick never felt like a real adult living with Kory in California. He never thought he would be a different person than the one he was at twenty two, either, but Bludhaven proved to be just that. Now there was a kid to keep an eye on, and a woman Dick couldn't bring himself to trust. </p>
<p>Bruce and Talia weren't the same people they were in their twenties, either. </p>
<p>"Hey, B, have you ever been in love?" </p>
<p>Bruce seemed to be caught off guard by that. He blinked at something outside the window, before his eyes found Dick's. "Oh, well… Yes, I'd say so," he said, and rubbed at the stubble on his chin. "Once or twice. It's not something I think about often."</p>
<p>"Selina?" Dick asked. </p>
<p>"I…" Bruce began, sounding hesitant and unsure. "I have thought about her once or twice in the past as well, yes." </p>
<p>"You mean in the past five minutes, right?" Dick laughed, but Bruce looked at him with an expression that walked the line somewhere between curious and serious. He put one hand on Dick's shoulder, and it felt heavier than it should have been. </p>
<p>"Something on your mind?" he asked. </p>
<p>"A couple things," Dick admitted. But there was no way to bring up Talia, after their entire history blew up in Bruce's face just a few months ago. In the corner of his life, there was one Damian Al Ghul. </p>
<p>Another silence followed, and this one Dick was more familiar with. It had more to do with Bruce trying not to say the wrong thing, rather than him not knowing what to say. It was never something he particularly excelled at.</p>
<p>Eventually Bruce sighed, and pulled his hand away.</p>
<p>"You know, Barbara and her father are out of town for the holidays, but I'm sure she would love to hear from you," he said, and Dick nearly choked on nothing. Bruce paid that no mind, and turned around again to look out of the window. The Flying Graysons poster smiled down at them like the graves in the backyard, still in perfect condition. He continued. "Loving someone is… Complicated. I can't tell you how many times I wished I could have something like that, but I don't think romance is for me. I have you, and Alfred and Cass and the boys. Barbara and Stephanie, too. I'm probably not the person you want to go to for relationship advice, but… I understand. That it can be scary."</p>
<p>Dick thought about something else entirely. "It can be," he said.</p>
<p>"I think you are very capable," Bruce said, before shaking his head. "I know you are capable. Don't let fear hold you back."</p>
<p>He wondered what it was like on the other side of  Dick Grayson's greatest tragedy. To be a man barely out of his twenties, with a responsibility that's bigger than life.</p>
<p>He sighed, and closed his eyes. "B, that's not…" </p>
<p>"I'm just saying," Bruce said, gently. "A phone call never hurts."</p>
<p>Dick waited. And opened his eyes again, and nodded. He still needed to pack. </p>
<p>"Sure."</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. January (Easy to Love)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter contains discussion of past physical abuse, please proceed with care if that is something you find upsetting or triggering.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The snow had melted away and turned into mud by the time Dick had made it back to Bludhaven, and returning to work after New Years eve proved to be unusually dreadful. His first week back had him stuck doing paperwork left over from last month, drinking more coffee than he did since finally admitting to himself that he hates coffee, and playing games on his phone. He passed by The Flavor Village on his way back home every day, hopeful, but ended most of his nights with the same hole in the middle of his chest.</p>
<p>With the retreat of the snow came the rain and hail, painting the sky a blackish gray and flooding most of the downtown streets like something out of a godly damnation plan. Dick found out about it when he got a text from Jason one early morning, four words that left a lump in his throat and a bad aftertaste on his tongue: careful on the roads. He left his car at home, most days, and took the subway to work. </p>
<p>Today, once again, Dick got stuck in the office with a week's worth of paperwork to do. He spent most of the evening on his phone, going back and forth between texting Tim and Barbara and trying to beat his Candy Crush high score. Outside, it was pouring. The rain remained heavy on his shoulders even after he opened his umbrella, washing away at his shoes and gathering at the side of the road. The nearest subway station was only a few blocks away, and if he walked fast enough he could make it to the next train passing through Parkthorne Avenue just in time, but instead he turned around and made his way towards the city center.</p>
<p>Dick stopped on the street across from the closed ice cream shop, watching it through the rain almost like it was something else entirely, unrecognisable through a curtain of gray. He found Damian Al Ghul sitting under the little roof by the shop's entrance, his backpack cradled to his chest and his hood hanging over his head. He was once again underdressed for the weather, with a jacket and jeans and a pair of worn sneakers.</p>
<p>The kid was something else, too. In a way he reminded Dick of Jason before the accident, or himself after his parents fell. A boy carrying a grief that couldn't really be called anything but rage. Dick was almost certain the kid has been avoiding him ever since he came back from Gotham, and could think of too many reasons why that would be.</p>
<p>He looked up when Dick came to a stop on the stairs in front of him, nose and cheeks red from the cold and hair plastered to his face. The hood didn't stop him from getting thoroughly soaked through. Dick tilted his umbrella to cover the both of them, and for a moment they just stared at each other.</p>
<p>"Do you have anywhere to go?" Dick asked.</p>
<p>"Can I go to your place?" Damian asked in return. His voice was small, but he still had that look about him, like he was waiting for a reason to attack.</p>
<p>Forgetting the rain, Dick decided to hail a cab.</p>
<p>Damian remained close under his umbrella the entire way, allowing Dick to steer him by the shoulders as they walked down the street, and neither of them dared speak over the rain. They still arrived at the 1013 apartment building soaking wet, dripping water on the lobby floor and into the elevator. Dick couldn't remember the last time he cleaned his apartment, and he hadn't bought any groceries since Jason came to visit a couple months back, but at least he knew the heating was working fine.</p>
<p>Inside, his gym clothes were all over the living room floor and the sink was filled with dirty mugs he forgot to wash over the weekend. He turned on the lights and heating, and hung his umbrella on one of the chairs by the kitchen island. Damian continued to stand at the door, looking like a drowned cat. He frowned at the mess, before looking up to frown at Dick. He still held his backpack in one hand.</p>
<p>"I'll go see if I have anything dry you can borrow," Dick said. He kicked the clothes under the couch on his way to his room. "How do you feel about box mac and cheese?"</p>
<p>"Disgusting," Damian said. "Can I use your shower?”</p>
<p>Dick turned around to give him a look, and Damian pouted before averting his gaze to the puddle gathering at his feet. He carefully set his backpack next to Dick's discarded umbrella. "The water in our building stopped running yesterday," he explained.</p>
<p>"Sure, go ahead," Dick said. "Down the hall."</p>
<p>Damian waddled away, leaving a trail of watery footprints behind him, and Dick went to dig through his closet. He found a pair of sweatpants Tim forgot in his dryer last time he was over, a single pair of clean socks and his Gotham Knights jersey. Most of his other clothes went straight to the growing pile of dirty laundry in the corner of his room. When he came inside the bathroom he saw Damian already took off his shoes and threw his jacket on the floor. Dick set the dry clothes down next to the sink and picked up the jacket to hang in the living room.</p>
<p>"It's either mac and cheese or a bag of baby carrots, so I'm making mac and cheese" he said. Damian didn't really respond, just huffed in distaste as he started pulling his t-shirt over his head. Dick turned to leave, but found himself pausing when he caught sight of the kid's back in the mirror. There were three diagonal scar marks stretching from one shoulder blade down to the small of his back, pale against the brown of his skin and misplaced in the same way as an ice cream parlor in the middle of a December storm, or a child sitting alone in the rain. A second passed like it was a decade, before Dick stepped out and closed the door behind him.</p>
<p>He went back to his room and changed into sweatpants and a Christmas sweater Catherine got him. It matched the one Jason had, just as ugly and vaguely creepy looking, graced with the same shades of bright red and muddy green. He gathered all the dirty laundry to throw in the washing machine and began loading up the dishwasher. The rain outside the window poured in the same rhythm as the showerhead down the hall, and for a minute or two Dick just stood in his kitchen and listened, watching his pasta water boil over the stove. He considered what would be the best way to approach this sort of subject with the kid, but came up short.</p>
<p>Cassandra had similar scars going down her back and across her shoulders, stretched over skin like they grew with her. Hers too looked like they never healed quite right, and continued to serve as a reminder of the terrible father David Cain was when she so much as wore a white t-shirt. Dick thought about eight year old Cass, mistreated her entire life because of a disability she was born with. About the dozens of abused kids he's met since he started working in the Bludhaven police department. About Damian, who was Bruce's biological son and Dick's brother by law, and whatever other scars a ten year old could have.</p>
<p>The pasta was done cooking by the time Damian found his way back to the living room, hair still wet and dripping on the shoulders of his sweatshirt. The rained on t-shirt and jeans he was wearing before were now lying in a heap on the bathroom floor behind him, and Dick made a note to throw them in the dryer before the end of the night.</p>
<p>Damian sat down on one of the bar stools at the kitchen island, and frowned at him. "What are you wearing?"</p>
<p>"It's a sweater."</p>
<p>"Reindeers shouldn't have that many teeth."</p>
<p>"Probably not."</p>
<p>Dick poured the mac and cheese into two bowls, and slid one over to Damian. He sat down across from him with his own serving, and for a second or two just stared at the cuffs of his sweater sleeves like he might find answers in the lines of knitted fabric. He considered the bag of carrots in his fridge, and the Budweiser six pack still sitting in his freezer, waiting for Jason to come back. He thought about grape soda, and snow angels, and the last time any of his family visited Bludhaven. It's been too long, if he ended up with nothing but beer in his kitchen.</p>
<p>Damian didn't eat. Dick's oversized Gotham Knights sweatshirt hung from his shoulders like a big cape and he looked, for once, very small. His eyes were tired, but in a normal sort of way, like ten year olds look when they've stayed up past their bedtimes playing video games. The overhead kitchen lights were like a fluorescent halo of irritating white, but inside the city it was dark even in the middle of the day. By the time Dick got off work it was already nearing midnight, and winter midnights stretched for years at a time. How long has this kid been sitting in the rain?</p>
<p>"Damian," he said, then. "How did you get those scars on your back?"</p>
<p>Damian looked up at him, and blinked. "My grandfather hit me with a belt once," he said without missing a beat. Then he narrowed his eyes, defensive. "Mother said it wasn't my fault."</p>
<p>"It's not. That's not why I asked," Dick said. He paused for a second, clenching and unclenching his jaw, and realised he wasn't surprised at all. "When did this happen?"</p>
<p>"A few years ago."</p>
<p>"Did that kinda thing happen a lot?"</p>
<p>Damian shrugged. "Not really."</p>
<p>"Your mom-"</p>
<p>"She wouldn't do that," Damian cut him off. He glared at him something fierce, but the sharpness of it was dulled by the too long sleeves of his sweatshirt and the red of his nose. He gripped his fork like he was considering stabbing Dick's eyes out with it. "You said you remember her."</p>
<p>Dick sighed. "I was sixteen last time I saw her. She wasn't fond enough of Gotham to stick around," he said. "Is that why you left your family?"</p>
<p>A moment passed, and Damian let the fork drop on the counter. "Yes."</p>
<p>"And he didn't want you to leave."</p>
<p>"No."</p>
<p>"Are you two in danger, currently?" Dick asked, careful. "Do you think he's looking for you?"</p>
<p>"My mother knows what she's doing," Damian snapped back. He caught his tongue a moment later, like he just heard the words coming out of his mouth, rotten in the space behind his teeth. He deflated. "We haven't heard from him in a few months."</p>
<p>Dick didn't know a lot about Ra's Al Ghul, beyond his name. Bruce always spoke it with such anger and disdain. He's heard enough from him to know that Ra's was a powerful man with high prestige and dirty money, something more untouchable than the sun in the details of his wealth. He owned a few small corporations and ran some company that was big in south Asia and north Africa, but as far as Dick knew he had no business in the U.S.</p>
<p>Damian eyed him warily. "What?"</p>
<p>Dick sighed. It was too late in the night to try and think around the dubious legality of anything to do with the Al Ghul family. It should be enough, for now, that he got the kid out of the rain. “Do you want to stay the night or do you have to go home after this?” he asked.</p>
<p>"Uh, my mother won't be home until tomorrow," Damian said. Then, thinking it over, he added, "I want to stay."</p>
<p>"Okay," Dick nodded. "I'll drive you back in the morning. Eat your dinner before it gets cold."</p>
<p>They finished eating in relative silence, the rain knocking on the window and the dishwasher humming behind them. It was a comfortable sort of quiet, an easy if withdrawn companion, sitting together on the sidewalk outside an ice cream shop and drinking soda. Damian seemed to change his mind about box mac and cheese, because he asked for seconds as soon as he emptied his bowl. As it turned out, no kid is immune to orange cheese powder.</p>
<p>When Dick was done he went to deal with the washing machine, trying to divide his laundry by color and throwing Damian's clothes into the first round. He got out a spare toothbrush and a pillow and a blanket, considered for half a second letting Damian have his room before deciding he would probably prefer to sleep where he could see the front exit.</p>
<p>When he came back to the living room he found Damian sitting on the couch, hands buried in his pockets and eyes fixed on the space somewhere between the coffee table and the TV. He left his bowl on the counter, but Dick allowed himself to ignore that tonight and instead just came around to sit on the other end of the couch.</p>
<p>The ring marks on the coffee table were like little swirly storms, something almost intentional in the lines between the tea stains and the wooden design. Dick had to move some of the papers lying around on the few stainless corners to find the remote. He didn't know if Damian was allowed to watch TV at home, it was hard to tell what kind of parenting Talia was doing, even if Bruce was never much the strict type. But the kid already looked somewhere along the lines of half asleep, stubbornly awake for reasons Dick couldn't bring himself to argue over, so he turned on a movie anyway.</p>
<p>It didn't take long for the rain outside to turn into somewhat of a storm, violent and angry and whistling some sort of unclear chaotic tune. Damian sat with his feet tucked under himself and his hands in his pockets still, eyes a little further away. And on the TV screen there was another storm going on, blue water climbing up a hill and chasing the little car up and away with a loud musical score in the background. The tsunami washed the entire sea side, leaving behind two small children and a toy boat, when Damian suddenly turned to look at him. "What was it like growing up in Gotham?" He asked.</p>
<p>He looked tired, like little kids should look this late into the night, and Dick knew he wasn't really asking about Gotham at all. Lightning flashed through the window, followed closely by the sound of thunder, and Dick allowed himself a smile.</p>
<p>"Honestly, Bruce was always a bit clueless when it came to young kids. I was eight when I got adopted, and my first day home he let me eat chips for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I drank orange juice until my teeth hurt. Alfred nearly had a heart attack when he found out." Dick looked at the coffee table, then, the lights from the screen painting it yellow and blue. He tried to remember what was the name of the tree in the front yard, but it was likely he never cared enough to ask. "Gotham was scary at first, though. A lot of things were scary at first."</p>
<p>"Like what?"</p>
<p>"School," Dick said with a laugh. "I hated school, and it was especially bad since I was homeschooled through first and second grade. I wasn't used to any of it. And the house was spooky at night, I was too scared of the dark to sleep."</p>
<p>Damian hummed, but didn't say anything in response. When Dick turned to look at him, he found Damian staring right back, and his eyes looked almost yellow in the living room lights. Something about it was so very Bruce Wayne, but he couldn't pinpoint what that was.</p>
<p>"But it was also… good," he continued. "Really good. Bruce would let me sleep in his bed if I wanted, and he signed me up for gymnastics class and local theatre programs and stuff. I did ballet for two weeks when I was ten. Alfred tried to get me into baking at some point, but it didn't really stick."</p>
<p>Dick thought about Jason, then, who was Gotham in almost every conceivable way, Crime Alley born and raised. He showed up right after Dick dropped out of College and drove off to San Francisco just to piss Bruce off, falling in love before he could make it out of Nevada and nearly getting married in Vegas. He spent a year in California with his friends, and by the time he made it back home he and Kory broke up and Jason was in the hospital. He thought about Tim and Cass, how much they needed Bruce and how much they needed each other. And about Tim now, almost eighteen, a teenager with some sort of galaxy weighing on his shoulders.</p>
<p>Even twenty years later, there was something to be said about families of choice.</p>
<p>"I heard you stole an inhaler," Dick said, after a moment. "What happened?"</p>
<p>Damian looked away, and crossed his arms over his stomach. "You already know."</p>
<p>"How 'bout you tell me anyway?"</p>
<p>"There's nothing to tell," he snapped back, but the bite got lost on his tongue and the words left his mouth sounding small. "I acted carelessly, and made a mistake, and it backfired. I know what they think of me. But I'm not sorry."</p>
<p>Dick hummed at that, noncommittal. "Was it Talia's idea?" He asked.</p>
<p>Damian didn't answer.</p>
<p>"What's the money for?" He tried again.</p>
<p>The silence went on a little longer this time, before Damian closed his eyes and huffed out a resigned breath. "We're leaving," he said, quietly. "North America, and everything else. For good."</p>
<p>Lightning crackled outside the window, and then another one, painting the living room with light. Thunder growled somewhere above them. "What?" Dick said, though he wasn't really sure he's said anything at all.</p>
<p>"Buenos Aires," Damian continued, but it was like he was thinking of something else. "New names, all that. It's easy."</p>
<p>"Easy?"</p>
<p>"To love."</p>
<p>They drifted into a sudden quiet, after that, a restless sort of white noise Dick didn't know what to do with. The movie ended before he could make sense of it, the credits rolling to a cheery upbeat song, and he turned the TV off with a sigh. Damian didn't say anything as Dick set up the pull out couch for him to sleep, but he watched with an uncharacteristic interest as he went about putting away the bowl on the counter and turning on the dryer in the laundry room. He ruffled Damian's hair on his way back to his room, and most surprising of all, Damian let him. Dick stayed up long enough to hear the kid settle down in the living room, before going to bed himself.</p>
<p>When morning came he found Damian already awake, sitting at the counter with mussed hair and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, munching on baby carrots. The rain calmed into a friendly drizzle, and the dryer concluded its cycle with a series of urgent beeps. Dick got dressed for work while Damian changed back to his jeans and t-shirt from last night, and the only place Dick knew to drop him off at was city center.</p>
<p>They sat in the car for a minute or two, the two of them the only people alive in Bludhaven before 6am, and Dick felt like the storm never actually went away. He sighed.</p>
<p>"Listen, Damian," he said. The kid met his eyes in the rear view mirror, before turning to look up at him. He held his backpack to his stomach like it was a lifeline, and Dick could feel the same sense of urgency settle in his bones. "You can always stay with me, if something comes up. I want you to come find me if you ever need anything. Okay?"</p>
<p>Damian hasiteted, for just a moment, before dropping his gaze to his shoes and nodding. Dick smiled at him.</p>
<p>"You can pick the movie next time. Deal?"</p>
<p>"Deal."</p>
<p>The rain picked up again soon after, and Damian was gone within a minute. Dick drove off to another day of downtown flooding and report writing, a slow morning of being careful on the roads. He thought about what Jason said, about Crime Alley and Buenos Aires and everything in between. Dick didn't know what happened between Talia and Bruce, more than a decade ago or three months back, but he knew he couldn't let this kid disappear on him.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>The next time Damian showed up it was the weekend, and the lazy morning was slowly turning into a lazy noon. Dick was folding his laundry in the living room, and considering the six pack of beer in his fridge.</p>
<p>He woke up to a text from Jason that morning, ever blunt and forever unasked for, though never unwelcome. He said he had some business in Bludhaven and will be crashing over at Dick's place next weekend while he's in town. With Jason "business" could mean almost anything, but he was never really inclined to share details of his life with family, of all people. Last time Dick tried to ask about a girlfriend Jason punched him in the shoulder so hard they thought he broke a finger. </p>
<p>Either way, all this just meant that Dick had to get his apartment under control in a week's time, maybe even buy groceries that weren't lucky charms cereal and box mac and cheese. He could possibly get some of that tea Alfred always kept at home, too.</p>
<p>He spent the rest of the morning texting Tim, which considering the kid's sleeping schedule meant he hasn't gone to bed yet. Cass sent a picture in their Bruce inclusive group chat, from which Jason kicked Bruce out of just yesterday and refused to invite him back in. The girls were in some other time zone somewhere above international water, with a pink sky outside an airplane window and one Stephanie Brown drooling onto the folded jacket of one Cassandra Cain. Bludhaven was humming some sort of nostalgic melody, under its own ever cloudy sky. Sometimes Dick missed having Cass and Tim around, just a few minutes drive away. </p>
<p>It was exactly twelve o'clock when Damian rang the doorbell.</p>
<p>He had his jeans and his sneakers and his sweatshirt on, the same Damian frown shining through Bruce Wayne's eyes, and the same backpack slung across one shoulder. He came inside the apartment like he's lived there for decades, and looked from the coffee table to Dick like he was waiting for one of them to speak first. Then he said, "I don't know any movies."</p>
<p>Dick smiled. There was something about this kid that walked the line of endearing and hilarious.</p>
<p>"That's fine," he said. "We'll just find something on Netflix." </p>
<p>Damian dropped his bag by the front door and walked over to the living room area, where Dick was still piling clothes on the back of the couch. He looked from the TV to the papers and dirty mugs on the coffee table, and glared at the still unfolded Laundry like it personally offended him. Dick tossed Damian the remote, and he caught it without fumbling, but seemed unsure of what to do with it next. </p>
<p>This was different than last night, and possibly every night before it, Dick knew. Something about the daylight felt like unexplored territory between the two of them, more alert and yet more clumsy at the same time. And while Talia Al Ghul knew her son was wandering the streets in the middle of the night, she didn't know he was meeting a friend in the middle of the day.</p>
<p>The overcast afternoon sky didn't seem so different from last week's midnight storm, though. They could probably still pretend it was raining outside.</p>
<p>Either way, it seemed like Dick was right about Damian not being allowed to watch TV at home. He finished putting away some of his clothes, and helped him navigate the remote and choose something to watch. They settled on another oldish animated film, and Dick pushed everything on the coffee table to one side before joining him on the couch. The unfolded laundry hung on the backrest above their heads like a lopsided roof, and Damian again just shoved his hands in his pockets.</p>
<p>The movie was one Dick remembered watching with Tim and Cass once upon a time, when she was little more than a stranger and Dick was the only one in the family who knew sign language. He checked his phone again and saw that Tim stopped replying to his texts, so it was safe to assume he finally fell asleep. The opening credits began to roll by, and Dick rested his feet on the table while Damian brought his own up on the couch.</p>
<p>Once upon a time Dick would have called it a domestic daydream. Gray rays of sunlight got caught in the stray mugs. He really needed to get his apartment in order.</p>
<p>Dick thought about Jason, and how he cut his hair shorter just last month. The two of them didn't really know each other back when Jason was walking the line of his mid teens, but Dick could imagine he wasn't too different from another kid sitting in the rain outside an ice cream shop. There was probably something to be said about that, too. </p>
<p>For the last couple years Dick has been thinking about taking Jason on a roadtrip to the west coast, now that he was already in his twenties. Dick was around the same age the first time he ended up in California with Kory and Roy and everyone else, it only seemed appropriate. But Jason was enrolling in the Gotham University next semester, and now Damian Al Ghul was sitting on his couch in Bludhaven, so it was safe to assume it won't happen anytime soon. </p>
<p>Jason would have probably given him hell for it anyway. </p>
<p>The movie was slow going, but Damian didn't seem to hate it, or at least didn't have anything bad to say. It was hard to determine whether his silence was that of content or dislike. Dick wondered if he would like Star Wars.</p>
<p>This time around he didn't wait for Damian to ask, because he knew he wanted to even if it wasn't something he would admit to wanting. Most sons wanted to know their fathers, and Wayne was one name that was both hard to live up to and hard to forget. Dick would think it was the only thing that kept him coming back, if he didn't already know about the mac and cheese.</p>
<p>So he said, "The first time I fell from that tree back home I was maybe… nine years old?" Damian turned to look at him, confused. He didn't say anything in response, just stared back at Dick with big eyes and a set jaw, looking like he wouldn't be able to stop himself from biting if he were to open his mouth. "I tried to jump from one of the branches to the second floor window. Bruce and Alf both freaked out, so much. I thought they were gonna kill me." </p>
<p>Dick also freaked out, at the time. He was only a kid, and had just lost his parents. They fell, too, and though nothing about that was the same there was one second where Dick was scared of dying like they did. Damian looked on, curious, and he just shrugged. </p>
<p>"Bruce took me to the hospital."</p>
<p>"You broke your arm," Damian said, careful. </p>
<p>"I did," Dick agreed. "We were in the ER the whole day, I got a cast and everything. And It was the first time I've seen Bruce look that scared. He didn't calm down even after we got released."</p>
<p>"And the second time?" Damian asked. </p>
<p>Dick turned back to the TV screen. They were only half an hour into the movie, and the sky outside the window looked kind. He still had laundry to fold, coffee tables to clean. </p>
<p>"I was twelve, and he still freaked out," he said. "But the third time I managed to make the jump. I mean, Bruce still wasn't happy about it, but I did it. I could probably still do it today, though I haven't practiced any gymnastics in months." </p>
<p>Damian huffed, and looked away. "You're too heavy." </p>
<p>Dick laughed. "Yeah, probably."</p>
<p>They sat in the noise of the movie for another minute or two, little pieces of dialogue and music floating through the air, before Damian suddenly got up. He disappeared behind the couch to the other side of the room, and Dick turned around to see him rummaging through his discarded backpack. When he came back around, he was holding three notebooks. Two were paperbacks, and another had a hard cover.</p>
<p>There was still something of a frown on his face, but his ears were red. Dick realised with a start that the kid was embarrassed.</p>
<p>He handed him the notebooks, and Dick recognized the red one. It was the same little token from a few months back, found with coffee spilled all over his uniform and returned later that week with a can of grape soda. The sketch of the tree from the front yard was there too, somewhere, unmistakably Gotham. The paper felt so fragile between his hands, and he held onto it as gently as he could. </p>
<p>A moment passed, and Damian reached over to open one of the older looking notebooks. This one was green, the pages wrinkly with use and yellow from humidity. He flipped through the pages until he stopped on a crooked bunch of birds. They looked like the work of a young child. </p>
<p>"This one is from Brazil," Damian said. And Dick flipped through more pages of birds, ones he didn't know enough about to recognize but that had distinct wings or beaks or colors, and others that looked like they were copied from a picture or a book. There were also some stray cats, but none of those were given faces, just a set of whiskers and a triangle nose. Damian touched the paper with careful fingers. "Some are from Canada, too. They're not really good. I was eight." </p>
<p>But Dick thought they were very impressive, for a kid that age. He couldn't imagine eight year old Dick Grayson sitting still long enough to accomplish something like this.</p>
<p>The next notebook he picked out was black, and Damian told him this one began in Morocco and ended in Tunisia, with one week spent in Thailand in the middle of it all. Damian went through each page with Dick and named every bird, said something about the wings or the beaks or the colors, a catalog of three or four years and half a dozen places through pigeons and ducks. The last notebook began in North America, and stopped somewhere in New Jersey. </p>
<p>The movie continued into its last hour, somewhere else.</p>
<p>Then there was the tree at the Wayne house's front yard, of course. It was familiar in more ways than one, be it with the pain of a broken bone or the taste of grape soda. The garden Alfred planted saw many Waynes, housed two of them in its ground. He wondered what it thought of one Damian Al Ghul.</p>
<p>"You know," Dick said. "Martha Wayne, your grandmother, she was an artist too."</p>
<p>Damian blinked at that. "Really?"</p>
<p>"Yeah," Dick nodded, but he didn't know what to say beyond that. He never got to meet Martha, and he didn't know what Damian wanted to hear, either. It almost felt like saying anything more would take away from what he was already given, these drawings he held between his hands and whatever trust was attached to them. </p>
<p>He handed back the notebooks. Outside the window, the clouds gathered up into angry groups of gray. It seemed like rain was on its way again. Nobody was watching the TV anymore. </p>
<p>"Do you want a ride home?" Dick asked, but Damian just shook his head no. Dick mulled it over in his head for a moment, before eventually getting up. "I want to give you something before you go."</p>
<p>He went to his room and started rummaging through his closet drawers until he found his old phone, the screen cracked and the battery shabby, but still usable. It took a few minutes to find the charger and turn it on, a few more to figure out how to work it. He put his current contact there as Grayson with a little smiling emoji.</p>
<p>He turned around to see Damian watching from the doorway, blinking at him with an unreadable downturn to his mouth. Dick handed him the phone, the contact name still smiling up at them from the broken screen, and he just stared at it.</p>
<p>Rain would come sooner or later, flooding sections of the downtown streets and threatening electricity lines, reminding sons that they need to go home to their mothers. But a phone call never hurts.</p>
<p>He pocketed the phone, and left while the sky was clear.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The movie they watched was Ponyo, if anyone's wondering:)</p>
<p>Kudos and comments are always appreciated! Thank you for reading!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Interlude (Midnight Doubts)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>That night there was no rain, but Dick lay in bed and tried to imagine it tip-tapping outside his window anyway. It was late, and as he stared at his phone it blinked back a fifteen percent battery.</p><p>A part of him expected to get a call from Damian, even though he'd seen him just that morning. He imagined the kid around the corner from the apartment building with a knife hidden in one pocket and a sketchbook in the other, or asleep outside an ice cream shop. Another part of him was wondering why the hell Jason was leaving him on read.</p><p>The buttery dropped from a fourteen to a thirteen to a twelve, and the hour was nearing 3am. He had work tomorrow and his charger was lost somewhere under his bed. But for a reason that was beyond him he was still awake, lying in bed and hoping for rain.</p><p>He reached single digits when he got a text from Tim.</p><p>
  <em>-You up?</em>
</p><p>There was nothing much out of the ordinary about that, in ways of Tim's lopsided sleeping habits. It seemed like the only consistent thing about him these days. Dick stared at the notification for a minute longer before opening their chat.</p><p>
  <em>-Yeah</em><br/>
<em>What's up?</em><br/>
<em>Don't tell me u just woke up</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-Can we talk?</em>
</p><p>Dick was so tired. He considered the inevitable conclusion that he just wasn't cut out for this, being an older brother. Being an adult. He wanted to go back home and crawl into Bruce's bed when the shadows seemed too scary, close his eyes and ask Alfred to leave the lights on in the hallway.</p><p>In the back of his head Dick wondered if he was overreacting. Bruce wouldn't have let his son go with Talia if he knew she was abusive, right? He knew that woman years ago, but he knew her nevertheless, enough to have loved her once upon a time. Dick considered the possibility that there was an easy answer, that Talia was a good mother and Damian was fine and Dick was just playing Bruce Wayne when he was never meant to.</p><p>Maybe Dick was just too used to tragedy.</p><p>The message stared back at him, and the battery dropped another percent. He didn't know what he was waiting for.</p><p>
  <em>-Ofc. Do you want me to call?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-No</em><br/>
<em>I just</em><br/>
<em>Been thinking</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-Never a good idea at 2am</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-My dad called today</em>
</p><p>And really, Dick should have seen this coming months away. The holidays were never kind to family matters, least of all to those concerning the Drakes. He took a steadying breath, and got up to fish his charger from under the bed.</p><p>Tim met him with an unusual uncertainty.</p><p>
  <em>-He wants me to come over for dinner once he's back in Gotham</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-What did you say?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-I said I'll go</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-Do you want to go?</em>
</p><p>There was a long pause after that, three dots that circled back and around for a short little eternity. Dick knew that in the few years since the trial Tim had always been accompanied by either Cass or Stephanie whenever he made a visit to his old home, and nobody trusted Jack Drake enough to give him the benefit of the doubt. If he remembered correctly, the last time Tim paid a visit alone was for Dana's birthday a couple months back, but he hadn't mentioned seeing Jack in person since December.</p><p>
  <em>-I don't know?</em><br/>
<em>Maybe?</em><br/>
<em>I don't know</em><br/>
<em>I think I'm angry</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-At him?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-At everything</em><br/>
<em>But mostly him</em><br/>
<em>We haven't really talked since the whole wedding shitshow, and I know he blames B for everything but</em><br/>
<em>I just</em>
</p><p>Another long pause followed. This wasn't an easy situation to put into words, Dick knew that much. He didn't wait for Tim to continue.</p><p>
  <em>-I already know what kinda man jack is</em><br/>
<em>You don't owe him anything</em><br/>
<em>Not a relationship and definitely not a dinner</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-I think he might be trying to be better</em>
</p><p>Well, Dick didn't know about that.</p><p>They could talk in circles about this stuff for hours, have done so a thousand times before and never reached any sort of blanket agreement. But right now the stillness of Bludhaven felt overwhelming and Dick didn't know if in twenty seven years he had ever said the right thing, had made even one worthwhile decision. And if Tim wanted to walk Jack Drake down some path for redemption, maybe Dick was not the person to go to.</p><p>
  <em>-Is this a you needing to vent problem or a you wanting my input problem?</em><br/>
<em>Cuz I don't think you'll like my opinion</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-Idk</em>
</p><p>Dick considered that for a moment. It was late. He looked outside the window, and wished for rain.</p><p>
  <em>-Do u wanna come visit sometime? It's been a while since you've been in town</em><br/>
<em>Bludhaven misses you</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-Sure</em>
</p><p>There was another short pause, and Dick frowned at his phone.</p><p>
  <em>-I think you should sleep on it. Come back to it when your brain isn't soggy cereal. K? We can talk tomorrow</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-Ok</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-Promise me you'll go to sleep?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-Promise</em>
</p><p>And, well, that just had to be enough.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. February (Jason Todd)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Damian hid the phone between the pages of his most tattered notebook, safely tucked away among Brazilian pigeons and Canadian songbirds at the bottom of his backpack.</p><p>The best course of action would have probably been to change its location every so often, and maybe once upon a time that would have been an easy task, but now between his books and his clothes and his drawings Damian didn't have that many options to choose from. As things were, he hoped the notebook's retreat from the bookshelf wasn't too obvious. </p><p>His mother couldn't find out.</p><p>In the following week Damian hadn't gone anywhere near the ice cream shop and avoided the streets leading up to Parkthorne Avenue all the same, asphalt roads and cracked sidewalks he had already committed to memory. He recognized this was a misguided fear more than it was necessary caution, but it breathed down his neck regardless. Bludhaven was still just as much a stranger as it was four months ago.</p><p>By the end of the week he decided it was time to brave the streets one more time. His mother spent the entire morning in the bath, and Damian woke up to the sound of running water. It had him lying in bed for another few minutes and listening, a calm he only ever felt with his mother, until the water stopped and he got up. The sky was dark with rain and there were still no birds in Bludhaven.</p><p>His mother brushed back his hair and kissed his forehead when he passed by her before heading out, and guilt tasted bitter behind his teeth. The bag felt heavier than usual on his shoulders.</p><p>When he passed the corner to Grayson's apartment building, it was already noon. The rain calmed to a gentle drizzle, and it followed him through the front entrance and up the elevator to the third floor. The apartment door was cracked open when he got there, the sound of too loud music and the whistling of a kettle leaking out into the corridor, mixed with two other voices.</p><p>Damian pushed open the door, and carefully peeked into the kitchen. A duffle bag stood between him and the living room, where the TV was yelling at no one and the coffee table was covered with unwashed dishes. A denim jacket hung on one of the kitchen island stools, and a red helmet sat on the counter. On its other side there was one Jason Todd.</p><p>Damian had only ever seen the man as a pictured boy on his father's office desk, and a motorbike parked in the back of their garage. He hadn't noticed it outside the building. </p><p>The kettle came to a bubbling silence, and Grayson's voice sounded from behind a cabinet. </p><p>"Wait, so you're hanging out with Roy and Kory now?" he said, then followed with, "Stop dragging your muddy boots all over my kitchen."</p><p>Jason Todd snorted, and said something that got drowned out by the TV. Grayson reappeared with two more mugs in hand. "Besides, we're allowed to have mutual friends, Dick."</p><p>"They're both my exes, Jason!"</p><p>"Well, I didn't know you had a monopoly on every redhead in America."</p><p>"Fuck off."</p><p>"Give me a break, I literally just got here." </p><p>"Fuck off," he repeated. "Do you want sugar in your tea?" </p><p>"What are you, a child?"</p><p>Music and sound effects muted something more out, and Jason Todd turned around before Damian could decide whether he should charge forward or retreat. The man raised an eyebrow at him, all messy hair and crooked frown, and Damian felt like a drowned cat. </p><p>"Hey, the fry's here," he said.</p><p>Grayson turned around then as well and for a moment did nothing but blink, before a big smile spread on his face. It was toothpaste commercial white, and as genuine as anything could be. Something like guilt pinched inside Damian's stomach, and he felt bad for the week he spent avoiding every street between city center to Parkthorne Avenue. Grayson's contact number remained where he left it, forgotten at the bottom of his bag.</p><p>A little apple shaped sugar container sat next to the two mugs and the electric kettle. Tupperware klunked together some harsh melody. </p><p>"Damian, come in, it sounds like it's still raining outside," Grayson said. It probably looked like it too, with the state of his water stained clothes and the puddle gathering at his shoes. "You want some tea?"</p><p>Damian doubted there were any clean cups left in those cabinets, and that the tea was really worthwhile anyway. He stepped inside, and closed the door behind himself. "No."</p><p>Jason Todd leaned back against the kitchen island and eyed Damian with an odd look, something almost amused in the corners of his mouth. His hair was mussed and his clothes were some sort of intentionally untidy. A sharp scar pulled at one of his eyebrows, and after a quick glance Damian also noticed that he favored his right leg over the left. His shoes were muddy but dry. Damian carefully filed that information at the back of his mind. </p><p>He held his gaze and scowled back.</p><p>Grayson didn't tell Damian to take his shoes off, even though they were just as muddy and twice as rain soaked as Todd's. It brought up an odd sort of relief, one that made him senselessly happy in a way he couldn't put to words and didn't particularly appreciate. Damian tossed his bag to the floor.</p><p>"You've already met Jason, right?" Grayson asked.</p><p>"Afraid we hadn't had the pleasure," Todd answered for him, and grinned something obnoxious down at Damian. "What's up, squirt?"</p><p>Damian didn't answer, and instead just narrowed his eyes at him. Jason Todd just smiled wider and turned back to Grayson, crossing his arms. </p><p>"So Tim said he's driving over in a couple weeks? I thought his license got revoked."</p><p>"It got suspended, and I'm pretty sure that was your fault," Dick said. "But no, he's taking the bus." </p><p>"Doesn't that kid have school or some shit? What's he looking for in Bludhaven?"</p><p>"I hear his brother lives in the city," Grayson said, deadpan. He rounded the corner to set down the mugs on the island, then began fishing through the cabinets for another glass. "And what are you here for again?" </p><p>Todd picked up his mug and turned into the living room, where some clothes were still hanging from the couch and the coffee table looked like it was about to topple over. Grayson waved at Damian to sit down, and set a glass of water on the other side of the kitchen island. "Just making sure you're eating something other than lucky charms and oreos," Todd said. He turned up the TV volume some more, and carefully set down his tea before planting his feet up on the table next to it. "Anyway, if Tim comes over then I'm out of here, I'm not dealing with both of you at the same time. Your place is already a wreck without the kid's habit of letting things rot under his bed."</p><p>Grayson hummed distastefully, but didn't say anything more. He waved again at Damian, and he came up to sit at the counter.</p><p>They turned back to background noise and continued to talk about nothing over each other, and Damian drank his water. In the short time he spent in Gotham this sort of senseless clutter and chatter was something he came to expect, but for whatever reason it felt misplaced in this apartment in the middle of Bludhaven. Jason Todd was a peculiar man, not as simple as Damian had hoped him to be and a far shot from trustworthy, but if there was something under those layers of indifference it probably didn't travel far from his dirty boots. He lost interest in Damian quickly enough.</p><p>The helmet still sat in its place on top of the kitchen counter, and Grayson sat across from it. The mug pressed between his hands had a vague flower pattern, something like Petunias but yellow, the paint chipping away at the corners. The steam traveled up to his chin and caught in his clothes. </p><p>When it came to Richard Grayson, flowers seemed to grow even from inside soda cans. When it came to the rest of the Wayne orphans, even the garden at the front of the house couldn't make up for the people living in it. The graves of Thomas and Martha Wayne were more pleasant to be around. </p><p>He stayed anyway, and listened. Todd probably wasn't the worst of them. </p><p>Either way, Grayson didn't ask any questions. Damian didn't think he had answers to give even if he had wanted to give them. He didn't wander any further than the kitchen sink, and he didn't mention any birds or notebooks or phones. Damian wasn't sure how to feel about that.</p><p>Eventually the rain outside came to a stop, and Todd got up to wash the dishes. He gathered up all the dirty mugs and stopped just long enough to frown at the contents of the fridge. Grayson got up to drag Todd's bag into the bedroom, and Damian took it as his sign to leave.</p><p>"Really, what has he been feeding you?" Todd threw the fridge door closed with a shake of his head, and dumped the rest of the dishes in the sink. Damian stopped, blinking, too caught off guard to be offended. He looked from his bag on the floor to the bedroom door. </p><p>"Mac and cheese," he said. </p><p>Todd snorted. "God, what an idiot," he said, but it sounded more like he was talking to himself. He turned on the tap, and the running water drowned out his voice. "He's almost as bad as those two assholes back home, I don't know what they'll do once Alfie retires…"</p><p>He sighed something or other, and went back to washing the dishes. He didn't say anything as Damian gathered his things and left without waiting for Grayson to come back.</p><p>He hoped Gotham wouldn't follow him all the way back through Bludhaven, or out of it. Even if Todd wasn't the worst of them, there was still the risk that New Jersey would find them on the other side of the continent and drag up all of Nanda Parbat along with it. There was still a risk that a stolen inhaler and a series of scrawled credit card numbers were enough to leave a trail.</p><p>Damian didn't know whether he hated Todd or not. He seemed to have similar reservations about the Wayne residence at the end of Bristol street, or at least the people living in it. Today still, Damian's last day in Gotham remained as a pit of anger at the bottom of his stomach.</p><p>He had to be more careful now, on both sides of his relations. Draw the windows, lock the door, lie to his mother. Good thing those kinds of precautions ran in their blood.</p><p>*</p><p>The days continued into a tentative February, and Jason Todd became an affixed point in Grayson's little part of Bludhaven. Damian had seen him a couple more times in the following week, sprawled on the couch in the living room with his feet on the coffee table or boiling water for tea in the kitchen. Sitting on the steps outside the building and smoking, barely sparing Damian half a glance when he'd passed him by. Other times the motorbike would be parked outside but the man himself would be gone, and the only lingering sign of him would be the washed dishes and folded laundry.</p><p>Grayson had greeted him with a cup of tea every time he came by. That, too, seemed to have been a side effect of Jason Todd. </p><p>Damian's mother had been distracted enough not to notice anything amiss, still. Even as his midnight perusing turned into something more of a midday disappearance, her eyes were turned elsewhere, to Nanda Patbat or Gotham or some place around the corner of Buenos Aires. She seemed tired and wary, heavy in ways Damian hasn't seen ever since the stab wound in her side had finally healed over. It reminded him of the look she had on her face the night they left Montreal, something he barely dared call fear written in the lines of her mouth.</p><p>She brushed the hair out of his eyes in the evenings, before they went to bed, and talked about what they could grow in their garden a few months from now. The decision between flowers and vegetables was yet to be made, though Damian felt that perhaps he had seen enough flowers for a lifetime in the month he spent with Thomas and Martha Wayne. He talked about his birds, and the Bludhaven winter promised that he had nothing to show.</p><p>His mother tied her hair in a ponytail, and made the bed a thousand times. Damian couldn't remember if that had always been a nervous tick. He tried to remember Nanda Parbat, but the only remaining pieces of home he had were the weeks he spent sick and fevered with an infection. He slept in his mother's bed then, too, and on the other side of the door there was nothing but yelling. </p><p>The next time he came across Jason Todd, he was lying on Grayson's couch with a book resting over his face and a cup of tea balancing over his stomach. He lifted the book and peeked up when he heard the door open, then raised a brow at Damian.</p><p>The TV was on, but the sound was muted. Todd let the book fall back on his face. </p><p>"He's not here," he said. When Damian didn't say anything back he peeked back out from behind the pages and continued, "There's some actual food in the fridge for a change, like vegetables and protein and shit. Do you eat meat?"</p><p>Damian continued to stand at the door, and just blinked. Todd stared right back at him. </p><p>"What are you reading?" he eventually asked. </p><p>Todd looked down to the book in his hand with disinterest, holding it open with two fingers. He put the cup away on the coffee table and sat up. </p><p>"Little Women," he said. "I read it every February."</p><p>"Why?" </p><p>"It's a good book," he shrugged.</p><p>Damian stared at him some more. "Do you like Grayson?"</p><p>Of all things that seemed to be what caught Todd by surprise, and he looked up at Damian with a furrowed brow. Whatever casual mask he'd been putting on dropped just as easily, and all of the sudden he was awake. </p><p>"Yes, of course," he said, like he meant it. "Don't worry, kid. I used to hate his guts, once, but really at the time there were few things I didn't hate. Dick has some sort of hero complex, but he's alright."</p><p>Damian nodded, but didn't say anything in response. Todd didn't look away, and it was unnerving, the way he seemed to see right through Damian. He spoke to him like they've always known each other, with no sense to it. And though the man was little more than a tattered paperback and a motorbike helmet and a subtle limp, Jason Todd seemed to understand Damian more than his own father did.</p><p>"Don't worry, kid," he said again, almost gentle. And Damian thought he might ask something sharp and cutting back, but instead Todd just closed the book and shook his head. "Why do you call him by his last name?"</p><p>Damian blinked. "It's polite," he said.</p><p>Todd seemed skeptical. Damian hoped his face wasn't turning as red as he felt. </p><p>"He's a Wayne too, you know. And he cares about you a lot, more than you probably realize," Todd said. He held Damian's gaze for a long minute, some sort of challenge set in the lines between his brows, but Damian couldn't figure out what it was. After a moment he sighed and lay back down on the couch. "Dick should be back from work in an hour or so, you're welcome to stick around 'till then."</p><p>He placed the book back over his face, returning to his sleeping or reading or general ignoring, and Damian continued to stand at the front door for another minute or two. He looked from the still half full cup of tea on the coffee table to the electric kettle in the kitchen, where Grayson's car keys were missing from their usual place by the counter. </p><p>He left quietly, closing the door after himself. </p><p>*</p><p>The end of the week brought with it a rare retreat of the rain, along with the late departure of one Jason Todd. There were still no birds on the streets of Bludhaven but the worst of the winter was over, and Damian made his way to Parkthorne Avenue before the tension in his shoulders could change his mind.</p><p>That morning found him alone in their little temporary home, but he chose to treat that as a relief. The things his mother kept close to her chest allowed him to keep his even closer.</p><p>The door to Grayson's apartment was cracked open again, a little oddity that was Jason Todd's carelessness, but this time only the sounds of conversation traveled from inside. The rustling of footsteps gave way to unusually quiet voices, and Damian stopped in the hallway outside, suddenly unsure. Whatever end tail of conversation he caught, it almost sounded too private. </p><p>Carefully, he pressed one ear to the other side of the door.</p><p>"Just be careful with your stupid fucking death bike, okay?" Grayson's voice came through first, sounding resigned. There was a sigh to it, audible even through his careful cheer. "And maybe go check up on him once you're back in Gotham." </p><p>"I don't know," Todd replied. "I wouldn't want Tim to get the idea that I actually like him." </p><p>"Jason," Grayson said with a warning. </p><p>"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll text you when I get home," Todd waved him off. "Buy some groceries while I'm away, will you? With the little gremlin around… You know, something other than pasta."</p><p>"Damian likes pasta," Grayson said defensively. A long pause followed before he said again, more quietly, "Should we tell Bruce about this?" </p><p>Damian couldn't help but flinch at that, and everything his mother had ever said flew through his head in that second of panic. But Todd fell silent, like he was actually considering the question, so he clenched his jaw and stayed put. </p><p>"No, I don't think so," he said eventually. "Not yet."</p><p>"Do you think he's avoiding me?"</p><p>"The kid? Nah." </p><p>But Damian thought maybe he was, or maybe he should be. He could still tell his mother everything, risk whatever shape her anger might take instead of risking their safety. He peeled himself away from the door, looked back from the elevator to the stairs. He could still leave, while they didn't know he was there. </p><p>Todd went on, "I mean, I've been out trying to fix B's dumb vintage watch most of the week and somehow I still saw him more than I see my mom."</p><p>Damian took a few careful steps back, and started making for the stairs. </p><p>"Wait, is this why you're here?" Grayson asked. "You were working on a gift for Bruce's birthday?"</p><p>Todd stammered out something muffled, a few light years away. "No, Shut up." </p><p>And Damian went back to his mother.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. March (My Mother Would Be a Falconress)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title taken from the poem My Mother Would Be a Falconress by Robert Duncan.</p><p>This chapter contains a description of drowning, so please proceed with care if you find this subject to be upsetting or triggering.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Damian sorted through the few books he and his mother had sitting on the little shelf by the bedroom window, five paperback novels that survived the last several years of travel. Without the three sketchbooks lined up beside them, they looked overwhelmingly bland. He'd never read Little Women, and the classics of its kind that he did know were the ones his mother read to him years ago. Hamlet sat tattered and dog eared next to Macbeth and Antigone, a dictionary and a math book. </p><p>None of them seemed as important as they once were, a thousand years ago. </p><p>Damian was angry. At Grayson and Todd and Bruce Wayne and his mother, at Bludhaven at large and everything that came with it. He didn't understand any of it. And looking back at the last six months there wasn't a point where Damian remembered being happy, besides sitting with the dead in the backyard of Bruce Wayne's house. </p><p>He still took out the cellphone Grayson gave him at times, and looked at the single contact number written in it for minutes at a time. The little smiling emoji made him feel, for the first time in what felt like forever, impossibly sad.</p><p>Looking back at the last six months there wasn't a point where Damian remembered being happy, besides sitting with Richard Grayson to watch a movie.</p><p>He remembered that first night in Parkthorne Avenue clear enough he was almost confident he could draw it, even if he couldn't recall any details from the cartoon playing on TV. And on one of the nights before Jason Todd's motorbike showed up outside the building, Grayson had insisted they watch one of the Star Wars movies. Damian didn't really care for it, the low quality hero journeys of the seventies were beyond him, and even Grayson ended up dozing off halfway through. The afternoon turned into an early evening, and only the light from the TV illuminated the living room. Despite himself, Damian did doodle a little Richard Grayson sleeping alongside one of the little Robins in his notebook. </p><p>He has steered clear from there ever since Todd had left. His mother made the bed a thousand times, and disappeared for days at a time.</p><p>When March made an appearance on the streets of Bludhaven Damian's feet took him back to The Flavor Village. The city center was as he left it in the midst of winter, now clear of snow but hardly any warmer, with pigeons perched on the vowels of the ice cream shop sign. Bludhaven wasn't much more than a gray city with gray buildings and gray people breathing the same smog filled air, but it became a familiar thing under the soles of his shoes. </p><p>He sat down on the sidewalk, and watched the cars drive by on the other side of the road. He never really liked ice cream anyway.</p><p>He sat there for what must have been a couple hours, before a familiar pair of red sneakers appeared in front of him. The laces were yellow with time and worn at the edges, worlds away from the black uniform shoes Damian met the first time around. </p><p>"I had hoped to find you here," Grayson said. There was a moment's pause, before he sat down on the sidewalk next to him. Damian didn't look from the spot where his feet met the asphalt. "Everything okay, kiddo?" </p><p>Damian had always been his mother's son, but still didn't know how to play her game of subtleties. He was direct in his grudges. His anger was a reckless thing. "No," he said. "Where do your loyalties lie? Here, or in Gotham?"</p><p>It was a question thrown around often by his grandfather, once upon a time. Talia Al Ghul chose her son.</p><p>Grayson looked at him with surprise. Damian frowned. </p><p>"What, never heard of a dictionary?" </p><p>He shook his head. "What are you talking about?"</p><p>"I heard you talking with Todd."</p><p>Grayson still seemed confused, an odd expression on a face so distinct with dimples and laughter lines. He looked Damian in the eyes like it was easy. Damian looked over at a trash can behind his shoulder.</p><p>"You want me to go back to my father," he said. "You know I'm not welcome there." You can't make me, he wanted to say. I trusted you I trusted you I trusted you, he wanted to say.</p><p>Grayson's brows furrowed and he leaned forward, earnest. "Damian, I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do."</p><p>"Then why do you have to tell him about this?" </p><p>"I haven't mentioned any of this to Bruce."</p><p>"But you're going to?"</p><p>It wasn't a question as much as it was an accusation. A long beat of silence followed. Around them, birds had returned to the shop rooftops and people were going about their day as if nothing was amiss. There were no police cars parked at the side of the road. New Jersey barely filled a fifth of Damian's notebook. He thought about all the places he didn't remember, all the places his mother did.</p><p>"I won't lie to you," Grayson said, quiet. "If things stay as they are, it might come to that."</p><p>So it wasn't a matter of choice after all. </p><p>"Why?" Damian asked. </p><p>Grayson paused, weighing his words carefully. His lips thinned into a straight line, before he finally spoke. "Your dad… He's your dad. He should be involved, and he should take responsibility. I can't…" he sighed. "There are ways we can help, you know. Legally." </p><p>Damian scowled. "We don't need your help," he said. "It's none of your business."</p><p>Grayson gave him a pointed look. "You and your mother made it our business when you came into our city and took our money."</p><p>"This isn't Gotham," Damian bit out. "And I didn't steal anything."</p><p>It wasn't a blatant lie, but they both knew it was hardly the truth either. Damian refused to feel sorry. Grayson didn't comment on any of that, though, and instead just sighed. "Your mother-"</p><p>"Knows what she is doing."</p><p>"I don't think she does," he shook his head. "Did she tell you to steal the inhaler?" </p><p>"No." </p><p>"How about the credit cards info? The bank account documentations?"</p><p>They were thrown into another silence.</p><p>"So what?" Damian said then, angry again. It was all he ever knew, this fire in his throat. It was easy. "He said not to come back. I'm not coming back. We'll be gone by the end of the month and you'll never see us again. This has nothing to do with any of you."</p><p>He looked Grayson in the eye for the first time in what must have been forever, and found nothing but a persistent blue staring back. He didn't seem angry, but that just made Damian even more so. He wanted to hate him and he wanted to be yelled at and he wanted a fight. He wanted to ruin the last thing he had keeping him in this city, leave the Wayne name in the gutter with Al Ghul and move the fuck on. Grayson refused to let him.</p><p>"That's what I'm afraid of," he said.</p><p>Without saying anything more, Damian got up and stormed off. Grayson didn't follow. </p><p>*</p><p>Damian's mother returned to their apartment late that evening, with her silence loud enough to fill out the entire rundown neighborhood with dread. There was no stab wound in her side and no anger laced in the undertones of her voice, but she seemed more tired than he'd seen her in years. She filled the kettle on the stove with water and brushed Damian's hair back behind his ears, before disappearing into the bathroom. The sound of running water washed the silence away. </p><p>Damian sat down on the yellow couch in the yellow living room, and thought about how his mother would never buy box mac and cheese. Even during their first few years on the run, and after the money they took from his grandfather started running thin, there were still certain standards his mother insisted on keeping. Junk food and Christmas and blockbuster movies stood in dissonance with the Shakespeare sitting on their shelf, even in the gutters of Bludhaven.</p><p>Damian turned on the burner on the stove and left the kettle to boil away in the kitchen. He grabbed his bag from the bedroom and stepped out into the hallway, before heading downstairs to the dry night air.</p><p>It was suffocating, the guilt stuck in his throat. </p><p>Damian looked up to make sure the window of their apartment was locked and drawn as it always was, tried to imagine the sound of barely warm tap water filling the bathtub, tried to imagine his mother humming to herself even though she stopped singing ages ago. The bathroom window was too small to sneak out of, and it faced the other side of the street. He had a few minutes. </p><p>Damian dug around his bag and pulled out the cellphone. Grayson answered on the second ring. </p><p>"Damian?" his voice sounded odd on the other side of the line, distant in ways it never was before. Static-like. Damian could have almost sworn he sounded scared. "What's wrong? Is everything okay?"</p><p>"I'm sorry," Damian said, and he felt like crying. "I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it. I'm sorry."</p><p>"Hey, it's okay, it's okay," Grayson said. There was some fumbling on his side of the call, the sound of what must have been the TV getting turned off as it suddenly became unbearably quiet. There were no stars in the sky, and no people out on the street. "Where are you right now? Are you alright?"</p><p>"I'm home," Damian said, although that didn't sound right. "I'm okay."</p><p>"Do you need me to come pick you up?" </p><p>"No." There was a long pause, and Damian wiped at his eyes. "I'm sorry."</p><p>Grayson paused in return. "I know. It's okay."</p><p>Damian imagined him in the bedroom of his apartment, which Damian had only ever seen from the outside. The bed was always unmade, the closet door always open. Last time he was over, Todd's duffle bag had found residence at the feet of his nightstand. Damian had nothing else to say.</p><p>"Hey, I saw a pretty cool pigeon today," Grayson said then, out of the blue. "It had a white spot on its head, kinda shaped like a heart. Or a bean. And it stole my sandwich."</p><p>Damian sniffled. "That is pretty cool."</p><p>"Any new birds in that sketchbook of yours?" Grayson continued.</p><p>"Not really," Damian said. He looked down to the backpack sitting in his lap, his array of notebooks neatly stacked inside. It's been a little while, since he felt like opening a new page. "It's still too cold outside for birds." </p><p>"It's getting warmer." </p><p>"Yeah."</p><p>They didn't mention what it meant, that spring had already shown its face in Bludhaven. March sunk its teeth into their flesh like a hungry beast, and April didn't seem any more forgiving. Damian looked back up to their apartment window, the curtains still drawn, and sighed.</p><p>It had probably been a couple minutes already. Damian should probably head back, turn off the fire on the stove, pour a cup of tea for his mother and wait for her to start on dinner.</p><p>"I'm sorry," he said again. </p><p>"I'm not the one you should apologize to," Grayson responded. </p><p>"I need to go." </p><p>"Alright," Grayson said, carefully. He let the silence stretch between them for another second, and neither of them hung up. "I'm sorry too, Damian. You can call me anytime."</p><p>Damian nodded at no one, and ended the call.</p><p>He stayed outside for another minute, sitting on the front steps of the building with his bag held close to his chest. The nights were no longer as cold as they used to be their first few weeks in town, but Damian felt like he had ice shards in his eyes.</p><p>He looked down at the cracked screen of the phone. Grayson sent him an emoji of a duck. Damian sent back an owl.</p><p>His mother was still in the bathroom when he made his way back upstairs, but there was no humming coming from behind the closed door. He took off the kettle from the stove before it could boil over, and poured two cups of tea. That night, like any other night, they checked every door and window twice before going to bed.</p><p>*</p><p>A week passed as though it's been a month, and by the end of it more birds had found their way to the window sill outside their bedroom. They didn't often dare open it, but there were times Damian allowed himself to pull back the curtain and take a look at the occasional common pigeon or morning dove. Cityscape birds weren't much, but he drew them as long as they stayed.</p><p>His mother was home, these days, though home took on a meaning Damian wasn't sure of anymore. Their little life away from Nanda Parbat had always been the two of them versus the rest of the world, repeating the same tune at each other until the years had made it into background noise, but in the last few months Damian forgot what it sounded like. He came to miss her like he never had before. And he felt bad, in ways he never thought he would.</p><p>His mother never failed to notice. She brushed the hair away from his face in the mornings, her nails painted the same shade of green as her eyes, and kissed the crown of his head like she used to do when he was very little. At night they went to bed and talked about life a year from now. In the dark of the bedroom it was easy to forget everything else. He thought about the garden in the front yard of his father's house, the little sitting area by the porch and the dog and the people living a life on the other side of the picket fence. Damian had only ever known his mother. </p><p>For all the birds on their window sill, Damian was lonely. </p><p>There was nowhere left to go and nothing left to pack. The little belongings they had spread in little corners of the house now sat in a suitcase on the floor of the bedroom. Damian's sketchbooks and paperbacks returned to his backpack, and only the switchblade remained on the nightstand where he last left it. They bought flight tickets under new names. Damian's new ID card placed him at ten years old, but he will be twelve in April.</p><p>On the third Monday of the month Damian had finally decided to take his knife and leave the apartment. It's been a while since he's met Bludhaven at night, but the five hour deal still stood on its shaky legs, and he felt like there still might be something waiting on the other side of town. A fight, or a goodbye. Even through alleys upon alleys, he still found his way to the park within the hour.</p><p>Past the empty school yards and the streetlight beacon that was the Red Robin parking lot, the darkness of the late evening took over. No one was around to ignore the kid lingering by the walkway. Damian sat down on one of the benches.</p><p>There was no fight left in the city. Damian didn't know what he expected.</p><p>He thought about Argentina and Gotham and his mother. There wasn't much to it. Grayson sent him a few more swans and owls and chickens over the week, but Damian couldn't really bring himself to respond. He allowed himself to admit that despite everything he will be sad to never see Grayson again.</p><p>He thought about their first month in Bludhaven like it's been years ago. He never managed to do something behind his mother's back twice. </p><p>Damian stabbed a few holes into the bench before going back to the apartment.</p><p>The sound of running water greeted him when he opened the door, left unlocked in some odd Jason Todd fashion. It had him lingering at the entryway for a second, but when he peered around the corner into the bathroom he saw it was empty. The water was only just beginning to fill up the tub, condensation only just beginning to build on the surface of the mirror, and the entire building was silent. </p><p>He locked the door after himself and made his way down the hall.</p><p>He found his mother in the bedroom with her hair haphazardly tied on top of her head and the open suitcase sitting at her bare feet. The empty shelf and the closed window made for poor company, but the bed was made like it had been smoothed over time and time again.</p><p>"Mother?" Damian said.</p><p>She turned to face him with his sketchbooks in one hand, and a cellphone in the other. Damian faltered, and his eyes found his bag leaning by the wall where he left it.</p><p>A moment of silence stretched into another hundred. Damian remembered pulling a knife on a cop and thinking it wasn't a mistake his mother would allow him to forget. Not one he could afford to make. His mother's eyes betrayed nothing of what she was thinking, but her silence was deafening.</p><p>"Love, what's this?"</p><p>Damian didn't answer. His throat felt dry. He tried to think of something to say, some overlooked route of talking his way out of this, but came up short.</p><p>She looked at him with blank eyes and a set jaw. Her nails pierced the spine of the red notebook until he thought the hardcover might break. When Damian said nothing still, she let her hands drop to her sides and walked past him out to the hallway.</p><p>He watched as she continued into the bathroom and stopped by the tub, holding out his sketchbooks over the water.</p><p>She looked at him expectantly, but he remained frozen at the door. Neither of them said anything for a long moment, before his mother held up the phone in her other hand. From across the hall Damian could see Grayson's contact number looking back at him, the little smiley face like a stain next to his name. She pressed call.</p><p>The phone only rang for half a second before Damian stumbled forward after it, but he only managed to knock it out of her hand. It hit the wall with a thump and landed on the floor across the room. The ringing stopped.</p><p>The notebooks dropped into the bathtub a second later, and the water continued to flow. His mother looked down at them with a sour expression, before turning back to him.</p><p>"Explain yourself."</p><p>The water quickly turned black and blue with ink, high quality paper tearing away into sludge, and Damian couldn't think. Distantly, he remembered a time their shower had been stained red, the tiles slippery with bloody water and their newly washed laundry left ruined by the door. There were three years of birds stuck to the bottom of a porcelain tub now, but Damian didn't dare go after them. </p><p>At the very end of New Jersey, though, on a page full of woodpeckers and robins, a small corner was dedicated to a pencil sketch of Richard Grayson dozing off in front of the TV. Half asleep in his Gotham Knights jersey, his cheeks still dimpled with a hint of a smile.</p><p>The water kept running. </p><p>"I want to stay in Bludhaven," Damian said.</p><p>His mother looked shocked speechless, and her face twisted into an anger he'd never seen before. But Damian wasn't thinking, refused to think, and his anger felt just as loud as anything she had to offer. They glared at each other, neither of them making a move, when the phone started ringing from where it lay on the bathroom floor.</p><p>They both turned to stare down at it, stuck in a cycle of silence, before diving for it at the same time.</p><p>They both got there together, and just managed to grab it simultaneously. Damian tried to pull it out of her grip to no avail, the two of them grappling and wrestling on their knees until they eventually found their way back to their feet. Damian was wearing his sneakers, the laces slowly coming untied, but his mother was barefoot on the tile floor. Then he stumbled over the edge of the tub, and they both fell into the water.</p><p>Damian's head hit the hard porcelain, and for a moment the entire bathroom tilted upside down and sideways. Water got in his nose and he lost his grip. When he managed to lift his head above the water he saw wet paper and wet clothes and his mother bracing herself against the side of the tub, soaked from the waist down. Her ponytail had come undone, and wet hair was hanging in her face. The phone kept ringing, somewhere.</p><p>Before he knew it, Damian ended up below the surface again. Breath escaped him, and he thought maybe he had bitten his tongue. The water tasted like blood. And he couldn't think, couldn't think, couldn't think.</p><p>The ringing continued in his head, until that stopped too.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>As always, thank you for reading! See you again next week:)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Interlude (Midnight Doubts)</h2></a>
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    <p>Damian's mother first told him about death when he was about three or four years old. Her half brother passed away at night, one last heart attack in a series of many, and no matter how she tried to explain this to her son the matter didn't register in his little head. Damian never really liked his uncle, or any of the relatives they had living in Nanda Parbat. </p>
<p>Mara was the worst, and her father's death changed none of that. They still fought to the point of violence, under some misguided want to be the favorite child. And she still had a nasty scar right under her right eye, where Damian threw a rock at her face. He remembered they had to take her to the hospital, that day. And at the time, though Damian didn't feel particularly sorry, he was scared. When his mother took him back home he thought his grandfather would be angry enough to blind him too. But he didn't seem to care. </p>
<p>Damian's mother said her brother died lucky, and they were lucky he died. She didn't like him much either.</p>
<p>Damian didn't really remember what happened the day they decided to leave. He remembered hurting, and crying, and the sound of his mother and grandfather yelling at each other. He didn't remember, but there must have been blood. He remembered thinking, at the back of his head, of his uncle's passing. He thought of his mother explaining patiently, his hand in hers, that he needs to be nice to his cousin today. Damian didn't want to die. Six years later, he still couldn't remember what he did to upset his grandfather that much. </p>
<p>He remembered what happened later, when his mother sat him next to her on the bed in her room and started on cleaning and bandaging his back. He hid his face in her shoulder, and she told him, "There is nothing to cry about, there is nothing to cry about." He got an infection the following week, and it lasted long enough for the seasons to change, but as soon as his fever broke they were gone. </p>
<p>In the years that passed between Nanda Parbat and Gotham, he didn't think back to that often. Death still escaped him in similar ways it did when he was three years old, even if he came to understand the notion of it eventually. He never knew anyone other than his mother, for him to experience grief. He never could grasp how someone could die lucky.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. March (Feeling Sorry)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The radio in Dick's car broke on his way to Bludhaven Central, drifting in and out of static through some top 50s hits chart like a bad cough. On the other side of the windshield, the sky turned from an almost clear morning to another cloudy afternoon, and Tim was waiting to be picked up. </p><p>Dick spotted him by the graffiti stained walls of the bus station, beat up sneakers and a half ripped backpack that he probably hadn't bothered to replace since he actually lived here. That was an odd couple of years ago. He was wearing a hoodie with some obscure art reference on it, and a smile that hung from his face like a laundry line. </p><p>Bludhaven had missed Tim Drake. Dick had missed him, too.</p><p>"Hey, kid," Dick rolled down the car window, and Tim rolled his eyes. He went around the other side and climbed into the passenger seat. "How does it feel to be awake while the sun's still up?"</p><p>"Aweful, I hate it," Tim said. He threw his bag to the back seat, and pulled off his hood to reveal a disheveled bedhead. Dick thought it was possible he was a vampire.</p><p>"You didn't bring your new camera?" he asked.</p><p>"Nah. There's only so much of Bludhaven I can waste memory on."</p><p>"Well, some things might have changed, you don't know." </p><p>"Like what?" </p><p>Dick stopped to think back to all the pictures Tim had piled up over the years. Many of them were beyond him, bugs and street trash and other urban nothings in between. His camera work was good, not that Dick would really know the difference if it wasn't, but nevertheless there was something familiar about it. Something that was indefinitely Gotham, indefinitely Tim. </p><p>He shrugged. Little brother pride, there was something about that too.</p><p>"There's a new Chinese place down the street from the apartment," Dick said. "I heard it only kinda sucks."</p><p>Tim snorted. "Sure, I could always go for some spring rolls."</p><p>He turned up the faulty radio, and they drove away.</p><p>Dick's apartment was waiting for them, when they came back, messy as he left it and as welcoming as it's always been. The now empty sugar container still sat by the dirty sink, and the dark TV screen hummed something comfortable. Dick threw his keys onto the kitchen counter, and turned on the kettle. By the time he returned from his search for some sweatpants, Tim had already found residence on the couch with his laptop.</p><p>They ordered some questionable takeout and Dick started on coffee, kept in his cupboard despite having admitted to himself long ago that he never really liked it. </p><p>He thought about his last conversation with Jason, before he left again for Gotham. The decisions and promises they were never very good at following through. And he thought about Tim when he first met him, thirteen years old and young in a way that never really stuck. In the years that followed Cass and Stephanie were like glue at his side, as well as a shield. It must have been hard, now that they weren't around.</p><p>Dick hoped this wasn't beyond him, too. He drank his coffee, and it wasn't sweet enough.</p><p>The sun went down eventually, as they sat around wasting the remainder of the day away. It was familiar, though strangely far away, to revisit the little domestic movements of sharing a space with Tim once again. Washing dishes while his brother sat at the kitchen isle with a half finished box of noodles and sauce stained sleeves that will go to the laundry pile by the end of the day. A few years ago he couldn't imagine he'd find comfort in the mundane, but the water from the sink came easy. He went to gather up the rest of the mugs from the coffee table, and caught Tim carefully eyeing it.</p><p>There wasn't much there other than stray paperwork. It took him a moment to spot the leftovers of Damian scattered through his living room, in small corners of his home. </p><p>The clothes on the floor were joined by things that belonged to Tim once upon a time, sweaters that he forgot and outgrew lying between sweatpants that shrunk in the washer. In the kitchen the cupboards looked like a real pantry for once, with boxed Mac and cheese and black tea that Dick usually only saved for Jason. Grape soda, in the fridge. And on the coffee table, paperwork with little doodles of wings in the corners, next to a box of pencils. </p><p>They both stared at them for a silent minute. Tim sighed. </p><p>"The kid?" he asked. </p><p>"Damian," Dick agreed. </p><p>Tim sighed again. "Dick-"</p><p>"Did you speak with Jack?"</p><p>Tim clasped his mouth shut, looking angry for only a moment before turning over to resignation. He schooled his face into something quiet. </p><p>"Nothing's changed," he said, not breaking eye contact with the coffee table. "I, uh, told him it's still a yes. About Dinner."</p><p>Dick faltered, at that. "Oh." </p><p>They looked at each other, then, and there was too much to discern on the edges of Tim's face. He turned his eyes back to the doodles on the table, a flock of birdless wings.</p><p>"Are you mad?" he asked.</p><p>"No. Not at you, never," Dick was quick to say. That didn't seem to lift Tim's spirits, though, and all he did was frown down at his noodles. "When is it?"</p><p>"Next weekend. Dana said she'll be there too." Another question hung in the air, but Dick didn't dare speak it. The why of it all kept coming back through everything. Tim heard it, regardless. "I want him to be sorry. I want him to say it. I want… I want this to work."</p><p>He wanted to walk the man down a path of redemption, after all. Who was Dick to judge, when he spent the past five months doing the same. Tim screwed up his face.</p><p>"I don't know. I get that it's stupid. I'm just tired of being a little bitch about it."</p><p>Dick raised an eyebrow. "Did Jason tell you that?" </p><p>Tim scoffed, but couldn't hide a smile. "Yeah, he's such a dick."</p><p>Dick smiled back, knowingly. "No, I'm pretty sure that's me."</p><p>Tim's smile turned into something almost sad. He looked down at the papers on the table again, considering something he didn't care to share, and Dick eventually picked up the mugs and took them to the sink. He thought about the possibility of going home with Tim, when their week came to an end, even if just to be a text message away. It proved useful, in the years of Jack Drake. But at the back of his head all he could think about was that March was almost over, and very soon he will turn twenty eight. In so many years, he could hope to do one thing right.</p><p>Maybe he just needed to stop being a little bitch about it.</p><p>His phone started ringing, where he left it on the couch. Then as soon as it started, it stopped. When he came around to pick it up, he saw Damian's name in his missed calls.</p><p>Dick's heart jumped to his throat. He must have actually choked on it, because on the other side of the room he saw Tim get up and move into the living room, looking confused. He almost dropped the phone in his panic, but eventually managed to unlock it and call back.</p><p>Damian had called him, before, if only once. He saw the birds Dick texted his way this past week, even if he left them on read more often than not. He said everything was fine, then. There was no reason not to believe that still.</p><p>The call was hung up unceremoniously.</p><p>Dick pocketed the phone and started searching for his keys. "Something's up," he said. "I need to go."</p><p>Tim stepped out of his way, surprised, before following him back through the living room area. "What's wrong?"</p><p>"Where did I put my keys?"</p><p>"They're on the kitchen counter. What happened?" </p><p>Dick circled back to the kitchen and snatched the keys off the counter, before getting his shoes and jacket from the rack by the front door. He started tying his laces when he suddenly stopped.</p><p>"Dick?"</p><p>"I don't… I don't know where he lives," he realized. Fear settled in his stomach, pins and needles in his gut. He looked up at Tim, and found him looking back, concerned. He tried to swallow down his panic. "Can you track my old phone? The number… I still remember it. Same Sim card as before. I don't… Is that a thing?"</p><p>Tim approached him with his hands raised in front of him, carefully, like he was approaching a wounded animal. "Dick, calm down," he said. "Are you sure you can drive like this?" </p><p>"Can you do that? The location should be on, I think, is that enough?"</p><p>"I'll help, I promise," Tim reassured him. He took the keys from Dick's hand, and It felt clammy without them. "But I'll drive, okay? I can help. I'm helping. I can find the phone. Let me drive."</p><p>Dick nodded, and let Tim squeeze his hand before leading him out of the apartment and down to the street. The night was biting through his shirt, but it didn't help clear his head. They got into his car and Tim did quick work of finding the location on his phone before handing it over to Dick.</p><p>It was a five minute drive to downtown Bludhaven. They stopped behind one of the back alley neighborhoods and parked somewhere on the side of the empty road. Already a few hours into the evening, the street lamps gave the area an out of time glow, and an out of place feeling. It didn't seem to line up with what Dick knew of the Al Ghuls, these bumpy roads and uneven sidewalks and people who keep to themselves. There was no one outside at this hour.</p><p>They eventually found a man out for a smoke who knew about a single mother and a boy who moved into the neighborhood a few months back. He directed them to the third floor of an apartment building on the other side of the street, where all the lights were out but a few. Dick led the way up the stairs, his breath still not back in his lungs, and Tim followed without a word. There were three apartment doors on the third level floor, but only one was left ajar. </p><p>The world was soundless, on this side of Bludhaven, a silence of a different kind. It wasn't one Dick has been familiar with in a while. He knocked on the door to apartment number fifteen, and after a moment carefully looked inside.</p><p>There was nothing there. A lonely couch, an empty kitchen, a chair. He stopped to listen but couldn't hear anything. Tim said something, a thousand miles away, but he couldn't hear him either. Dick pushed the door open further and nothing happened.</p><p>Tim put a hand on his shoulder, holding him at the door in what was more of a warning than a precaution. "Dick," he hissed out, and Dick stopped. He took out his phone instead, and dialed Damian's number. </p><p>For a moment Dick was afraid the call won't go through, but only a second passed before they heard a half hearted buzz across the hall. The two of them shared a look, and Tim pulled his hand back. </p><p>Dick walked into the bare living room, leaving Tim to stand at the entry. The place was smaller than he expected, despite all the unused space. The one window on the opposite wall was closed and drawn shut. Tim stepped in after him a moment later, lingering by the kitchen counter in view of the door. Dick followed the sound around the corner.</p><p>"Damian?" he called, careful, but heard nothing still. </p><p>He walked down the hall, and reached a bathroom at the end of it like it had been on the other side of Bludhaven. He was greeted with his old phone buzzing in a puddle on the floor, and a body lying half submerged in the tub. </p><p>A pair of red sneakers hung over one edge, and an arm hung over another. Damian was lying motionless in the murky water. </p><p>Dick dropped his phone and rushed over to pull Damian out of the tub. He sat him up and held him by the shoulders of his wet shirt, wiped the hair away from his face before tapping him on the cheek. The kid didn't respond to the touch. Dick pinched him, and nothing happened still. He checked for a pulse at his throat, for breath through his nose, and couldn't find anything.</p><p>He remembered to yell for Tim then, but when he looked up he saw him already standing at the door, eyes wide. Dick began pulling Damian down to the bathroom floor.</p><p>"Call 911," he said, and everything felt too slow. </p><p>He started going through the motions of basic life support, as Tim disappeared somewhere around the corner and Dick was left alone with a lifeless Damian. Thirty chest compressions followed by two breaths followed by thirty chest compressions. His knees almost slipped on the wet floor, there was too much water everywhere.</p><p>Thirty chest compressions, two breaths, thirty chest compressions. He heard Tim talking on the phone, and the faucet still dripping just to the right of him. One of the tiles was cracked, right where the floor met the wall. And Damian, for the first time since Dick had the kid sit at his kitchen counter a January ago, felt very small.</p><p>Thirty chest compressions, two breaths, and eventually people came to tear Dick away. The paramedics took Damian with them in an efficient little storm, and the world came back in pieces.</p><p>In the aftermath of it all Dick finally saw the room for what it was. A mess of shampoo and soap bottles on the floor, dirtied water layered upon it like second skin, and a dead silent cellphone knocked against the wall. He recognized ramnets of paper in the bathtub, floating in its own ink, and a smear of blood on the porcelain. Dick walked over to the tub and began gathering the ruined notebooks. Tim caught his hand, and held it between two of his own. He realized then that he was crying. </p><p>"Dick, we need to go," Tim said, and his voice was gentle, gentle, gentle. "Calm down. Everything will be okay. We need to go."</p><p>Right. They should probably head to the hospital. Dick nodded, and allowed Tim to steer him out of the bathroom to the hallway. He let go of him long enough to pick up Dick's disgarded phone from the floor and hand it back. The screen was cracked.</p><p>"I'll drive, okay?" Tim said, and behind him Dick could see into the last remaining room of the apartment. It was a bedroom, with one window and one shelf and a suitcase sitting against the wall. Damian's backpack was there too, abandoned, but there was no sign of Talia. </p><p>Dick shook his head. "It's, uh… It's pretty dark, Tim." </p><p>"It was dark when we left your place," Tim reminded him. "I'll manage, don't worry."</p><p>Dick relented, and once again allowed Tim to lead him away. There was a trail of water all over the apartment now, from the bathroom to the bedroom and back to the living area. Some of it, Dick was sure, had been there before too.</p><p>Tim drove them to the hospital. It was dark, but to Dick the streets looked more like a blur of lampposts than anything else. The knees of his pants were still water stained, and the beginning of a headache started making itself known behind his eyes. </p><p>This has all happened before. With Jason getting in a car crash while Dick was on the other side of the world, with Tim struggling to breathe through an asthma attack in the backseat of Bruce's car before they even knew that was something that could happen. The familiarity of the situation was sickening, the possibility of another brother lost biting at his heels.</p><p>Some things Dick never stopped feeling guilty about. For the longest time, he felt he had been wronged for being alive when his parents were not. Bruce took him to therapists and grief consultants, but only into his early adulthood was he finally able to start moving past it. Jason was his biggest regret, for treating him the way he did before the accident and past that breaking point. For letting him push everyone away, hanging the title of older brother like an old coat because he never wanted it. For letting Tim be the one to mend the break they created. </p><p>Now he let Damian down, too. This has all happened before. He thought about what life looked like on the other side of Dick Grayson's greatest tragedy, and tried not to be sick.</p><p>When they arrived they were told Damian had been admitted to the ICU and that they couldn't see him at the moment. Instead they were asked to give his details at the front desk, and Dick told them what little he knew. Besides his name and current living situation, Dick realized he didn't even know exactly how old Damian was. The hospital staff had then called to open an investigation, and requested the two of them stay to speak with the social worker.</p><p>Dick and Tim stopped to exchange a look. They realized then that they had to call Bruce.</p><p>The rest of the night passed in slow motion. Dick talked with the social worker while Tim had stepped outside to make a phone call, and it felt like it had been 11pm for hours already. The sky had been dark for days. Dick's head didn't sit quite right on his shoulders.</p><p>He didn't know where Talia was, any indicator to her presence lost to the circumstances. But there had been an evident struggle in the bathroom, water prints and an open door left in its wake. Dick remembered the suitcase sitting on the bedroom floor, forgotten or simply ignored, and decided it was likely she was still within the city. But he didn't know Talia, not as a mother and not as the woman who ran away from Ra's Al Ghul. He was out of educated guesses.</p><p>He told the social worker he is Damian's older brother, instead. That he'd been looking after him when his mother wasn't around. That the kid had little contact with their side of the family up until now, that the two of them escaped a previous abusive guardianship when they left for America. He didn't know what else to say.</p><p>They were told Damian had been stabilized some time later, and was now being transferred to the pediatric department. Dick was told he reacted accordingly and did a good job, that the few minutes he spent trying to breathe air into Damian's lungs were crucial. Dick thought he could cry, if there was anything left behind his eyes. It left his hands shaking.</p><p>He sat in the lobby and waited for Tim to come back. When he did return, it was with two cups of coffee. He handed one to Dick, and he looked down at it with distaste. </p><p>"I talked with Bruce," Tim said, sitting down next to him. "He said he'll be here as soon as he's able."</p><p>Dick nodded. "Damian's stable," he said back, and then it was Tim's turn to nod. "They'll probably keep him overnight. And they'll probably wanna talk to B."</p><p>They fell into a silence after that. Dick thought about drinking his coffee, but as tired as he felt he was also afraid that his stomach wouldn't take it. Tim looked just as tired, next to him. He still had some stains on the cuffs of his sleeves, and he spent the whole night taking care of his older brother. It wasn't fair.</p><p>"What…" Tim started, before suddenly stopping. He looked up at Dick, unsure. "What the fuck happened?"</p><p>"I don't know," Dick admitted, and Tim looked away again. </p><p>"I…" he began saying, but stopped again with his eyes lost somewhere in his cup. The words seemed to get stuck on their way out of his throat. He sighed. "I feel so stupid."</p><p>"Yeah," Dick said.</p><p>"Did he ever say anything? To you?" Tim asked. </p><p>Dick stared down into his coffee and bit his tongue. Damian said his mom knew what she was doing. He said she wouldn't hurt him in ways he had been hurt before. But he also wandered the streets at night by himself, a boy with a knife and a grudge and a rage. He stole, out of spite more than anything. And he lied to Talia for months, there was no doubt there.</p><p>Dick should have known. He did know. He shook his head no anyway.</p><p>Tim didn't look up, but he nodded to himself. Drank his coffee, cleared his throat. "What happens now?" </p><p>"I don't know," Dick said again. "We talk with the kid. We talk with Bruce. Figure it out from there." </p><p>Tim hummed, and grimaced at the thought. Dick didn't know which aspect of the ordeal was more dreadful, talking to Damian or talking to Bruce. Either way, he could relate. </p><p>"I'm sorry, Tim," he said, quietly. Tim turned to look at him with surprise. </p><p>"For what?"</p><p>Dick wouldn't say it, but the past few hours felt a lot like what happened with Tim and Jack just a few years prior, back in Gotham. Neglect was just another color of parental violence, an asthma attack wasn't so different than drowning. The hours waiting in a hospital, the phone calls, the social workers, the panic. Dick was apologizing for many things. He couldn't put them into words. </p><p>He sighed. "I actually hate coffee." </p><p>Tim blinked. "What? Since when?"</p><p>He shrugged. "Since forever, I guess."</p><p>But Tim had always been too smart for his own good. He took the cup out of Dick's hands in response and set it aside, before reaching over to hold his empty hand with his own. </p><p>"It's okay," he said. "It's gonna be okay."</p><p>They sat there for another minute or two, hands pressed together. Then Tim finished drinking his coffee and Dick threw away his own, and they went to see Damian.</p><p>It was odd, walking into the hospital room and seeing the kid asleep in a bed that wasn't his own, anywhere else other than Dick's living room couch. The sheets were a light blue, the curtain was an unclear purple, and a nebulizer was standing by the wall next to a couple chairs. Damian looked small and pale and misplaced, like an ice cream parlor open in the midst of a December storm or a child sitting alone in the rain, but his chest was rising and falling.</p><p>It was a relief. It was a punch to the gut. It had been a long night. Dick went into the room, Tim trailing behind him. They sat in silence for another little forever.</p><p>When Damian woke up, it was with bleary eyes and a confused downturn to his mouth. His face was still some gray shade of pale and he seemed tired, but awareness was quick to return to him. He blinked at the ceiling for a few seconds before his eyes found Dick. Then they drifted to Tim, sitting behind him, and turned even more confused.</p><p>Damian's chest rose and fell slowly, lungs expanding as he took shallow breaths. His eyes remained fixed on Tim until Dick opened his mouth.</p><p>"Hey, kiddo."</p><p>Damian's focus shot back to him, and whatever bleariness was left in him turned into distress in a moment's notice. </p><p>"Where's my mother?" he asked. His voice was quiet and raspy, but sounded louder than anything in the empty room. Dick leaned in closer, and tried to match his volume.</p><p>"Damian, we're at the hospital. You drowned and suffered a mild concussion, but everything's fine now," he said. When Damian did nothing but stare back, he continued. "How are you feeling?" </p><p>He just shook his head. "Where is she?"</p><p>Dick paused, unsure, and did his best to collect himself. "Bruce is on the way, and-" </p><p>"I don't care. Where's my mom?"</p><p>Dick shut his mouth, and bit down on the inside of his cheek until he could taste blood. He wanted to turn back to Tim for guidance, but stopped himself short, and looked Damian in the eyes instead. Something about them resembled Bruce Wayne, though the dark shade of green belonged to someone else.</p><p>"We don't know," Dick said eventually. "We're trying to find her."</p><p>He said that, and nothing happened. Silence filled the room, and their lungs, and dick's head. He didn't look away.</p><p>"Damian, can you tell me what happened?"</p><p>Damian looked back at him with wide eyes. He shook his head, and made to sit up. Dick reached out, then, hands finding Damian's shoulders, and the kid clung back to his arms with some unexpected desperation. His nails dug into Dick's flesh, and he continued to shake his head.</p><p>"Please," he said. "She didn't mean to. I swear she didn't mean to. Please don't…"</p><p>"Damian, Dames, calm down. It's okay."</p><p>"It was an accident, I swear. She didn't mean…"</p><p>"Damian, please, it's okay," Dick said, and pressed his palms down on Damian's shoulders until his grip loosened around Dick's arms. It left little crescent moons on his skin. "I believe you, I promise I believe you."</p><p>Damian looked back at him, still frantic and still pale and still recovering. Dick had never seen him so scared, and so small, and so young. He brought his hands down to Damian's elbows, let them rest there.</p><p>"Okay?" he asked.</p><p>Damian hesitated, caught halfway through another plea, but after a moment gave a shaky nod. Dick pulled him into a hug, through some unexpected desperation of his own, and most surprising of all Damian let him.</p><p>His hair felt like matted hay against his cheek, and Dick could feel him breathe in and out through his shirt. It was uneven and shallow, but it was there. He held on until he felt it calm down.</p><p>A moment or two later Dick felt Tim gently touch his hand to his shoulder, before getting up and leaving the room. He let him go without a word. They could deal with everything another day, when another day comes. Responsibility and consequence could, for once, be left to an afterthought. </p><p>A minute passed like it was mere seconds. Eventually Dick managed to convince Damian to go back to sleep. </p><p>*</p><p>Bruce arrived sometime after 2am.</p><p>He looked like one would expect Bruce Wayne to look, even in the middle of the night a city away from his home, a suit and tie kind of man. But Dick knew Bruce as well as he knew himself, and he recognized the urgency in the corners of his eyes as easily as he recognized his favorite work tie. There was an odd rhythm to his shoes as he crossed the hospital parking lot.</p><p>Dick didn't know what or how much Tim had told him over the phone. Dick didn't realize until then how much of a fool he had been, trying to hide this from him. He didn't know how Bruce would react. </p><p>As it turned out, Bruce didn't know either.</p><p>"Dick," he said, and stopped there, unsure. It was a rare sight, on Bruce Wayne, but Dick had years to get used to it. He closed the distance between them, and met Bruce on the cracked asphalt.</p><p>He felt like a little kid again, caught skipping class. </p><p>"B," he started. "I… I'm sorry."</p><p>Behind them, Bruce's car sat patiently between white lines. It was a shiny black thing, and though Dick didn't know a lot about cars he still recognized how out of place it looked here. A little supernova among a government funded rubble. Dick couldn't remember where Tim parked his own car, the information lost somewhere in the last five hours. Distantly, he did recall not knowing if Tim had even gotten his license back.</p><p>Bruce put a hand on Dick's shoulder, and the tension dropped to the floor. It lay there like a smashed bug.</p><p>"Dick. Son," Bruce said. "Just tell me what happened." </p><p>So he told him.</p><p>Six months fit impossibly neatly into a minute and a half of tense conversation, and things almost seemed simple in retrospect. Dick knew they weren't, really. Between stolen money and stolen inhalers and birds long drowned, circumstances wouldn't allow for anything of the sort. Still, Bruce always had one hell of a poker face.</p><p>He looked at Dick as if he could see all of the past twenty four hours plain on his face. And he asked, "Where is Talia?"</p><p>Dick sighed. "The investigation is still ongoing. We… We don't know anything yet."</p><p>Bruce nodded mutely. And Dick knew him better than he knew himself, recognized the happenings of something too complicated to name behind the downtown of his mouth. He searched after words for a long minute.</p><p>"And… Damian?"</p><p>"Asleep. Alive. They're keeping him overnight for supervision," Dick said. "He got a concussion, and no one's really sure what to do about custody…"</p><p>Dick trailed off, then, awkwardly realizing he was talking to the kid's actual father. He snapped his mouth shut.</p><p>Bruce sighed. "Why didn't you tell me before?"</p><p>"Damian didn't want you to know." </p><p>Of course, there was more to it, but there was no way to put it into words. Dick didn't know what really went down back in Gotham, Damian's first month in New Jersey, and witness accounts looked different from every angle. A surprise child, an inhaler, a con more than a reunion. He only really saw Damian once, then, and they didn't speak.</p><p>Still, the trust they built was fragile. Still, build it they did. Bruce accepted this with no words.</p><p>"How is he?" he asked instead. "How are you?"</p><p>Dick shook his head. He had been tired for months, will probably be tired for days to come.</p><p>"Could be worse."</p><p>The hand on his shoulder turned into a tentative hug. Dick remembered the days where he was afraid of the dark, afraid of Gotham, afraid of death. They could leave the lights on in the hallway one last time, if he only asks. He hugged Bruce back.</p><p>"I'm sorry," Bruce said, and Dick shook his head again. "He wouldn't want to talk to me, would he?"</p><p>"I don't think so," he said into Bruce's shoulder, apologetic. "Not yet."</p><p>Bruce nodded, and Dick nodded back. They stood hugging in the parking lot for another moment before pulling apart and heading inside. There was a lot of talking to be done still.</p><p>*</p><p>Dick sat with Damian through the rest of the night as he slept, sitting in a weird state of both being and unbeing, but morning caught up with them eventually. It brought with it a doctor's visit and a checkup, nurses buzzing around with a general promise to send them home by noon, and the last twelve or so odd hours. It brought with it the returning question of consequence and responsibility, and the police knocking on their door.</p><p>Damian refused to talk to them.</p><p>Dick let his silence be.</p><p>Bruce asked him, "Will Damian agree to come to Gotham with me?" and Dick said, "Probably not." Question of consequence, indeed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. March (Bruce Wayne)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>No one really stopped by the Gotham river on their way out of town. It was as busy an area as any, with traffic buzzing overhead and a marketplace buzzing not far behind, but the water itself was lonely and still. Gotham bridge hung above the murky surface, shielding it from the eyes of the sky and the eyes of the public.</p>
<p>Tim had won a photography competition with this view, once. Bruce never really had that kind of romantic eye himself. He stood by the railing, thinking that they ought to clean the river sometime, and waited. </p>
<p>A week had passed since Dick sent him back home, insisting Damian stay with him in Bludhaven. At least for now, he said, and when Bruce looked at him it was almost like he could see everything that happened in the six months since Talia left written plainly on his face. Bruce understood. There was a lot of guilt to pass around, he only wished he could shoulder it all.</p>
<p>Talia found him like she'd never left, then, and Bruce had lived in the same house all of his life. Not much had changed about her in a decade, she remained the same beautiful woman who was too clever for him to keep up with, the same ghost of a relationship that could have been. She aged as he did. He wouldn't have guessed that she was keeping a secret as big as an eleven year old son.</p>
<p>Maybe, in retrospect, it wasn't too out of character. </p>
<p>Then she left again, and there was the boy. In the time he spent in Bruce's care he didn't do much, and more often than not seemed like he didn't even want to be there. He would sit in his room or in the library, drawing or staring outside the window, well practiced in the ignoring of everything else. Otherwise he would sit in the backyard with the gravestones, and stay there for hours. He was an odd kid, had what could have been called a fascination with the dead. He was quiet only until he found something to yell about.</p>
<p>He hated Gotham and hated Tim and hated Bruce and Alfred. A scheme for money, a stolen inhaler. Tim was the one to find out, in the end, the things Damian hid behind the dresser in his room.</p>
<p>So Bruce handed Talia the money she planned on taking, and so he told her to take her son and leave Gotham. It was the least she could do. They stood at his front door that day, and the sun was cold, and Bruce was tired. He got manipulated and betrayed in his own home, and he was angry and humiliated and in a far corner of his brain, still in love. He told her, stay away from my family. She told him, I did what I had to do to protect mine.</p>
<p>He remembered her saying, "Starting a new life is expensive." </p>
<p>He remembered saying back, "I would have helped you, Talia. All you had to do was ask."</p>
<p>Bruce knew about Ra's Al Ghul. Back when he and Talia were still seeing each other the man was like a shadow at her feet, always there even when he wasn't. An awful father and an awful man. Bruce knew he'd been controlling his daughter's finances ever since she had finances to control, and that the wealth of their family had been her main livelihood in Nanda Parbat. But Bruce knew just as well that Talia always found ways to run circles around him, and always had her own ways of keeping secrets. Still, she chose her father over her lover. Ra's Al Ghul would have never allowed her to marry Bruce Wayne.</p>
<p>And Bruce never would have thought Talia was capable of the same things her father was. What would one call this development, a mistake of the desperate or a mutation of her history?</p>
<p>Bruce thought about Tim and Stephanie, who will be off to their first year of college as soon as school is over and the girls are back. About Jason, who spent the past few months completing his high school education and will start attending Gotham University next semester. About Cassandra, who for the first time has the means to live her life. And Dick, a boy who became a man sometime when Bruce wasn't looking. He felt guilty, letting his son do the job Bruce himself was meant to do. Letting him be the one to wear this responsibility around his shoulders. It wasn't fair.</p>
<p>He thought about the child he didn't know he had eleven years ago, a choice of fatherhood he didn't get to make. He had failed both Damian, and himself. There was a lot of blame to pass around, and Bruce was willing to shoulder it all.</p>
<p>There was a light shift and crunch behind him, and Bruce turned around in time to see Talia approach the river Bank from the side of the street. He waited until she came up to the railing beside him, before greeting her with a nod.</p>
<p>She looked the same as she did six months ago, and not terribly different than she did a decade ago. Clever eyes, clever mouth, a beautiful woman weighed down by years and exhaustion. Her hair was tied up into a bun, but a few loose strands still fell onto her forehead. She didn't use to wear her hair like that.</p>
<p>"Bruce," she said.</p>
<p>"Talia," he responded.</p>
<p>She leaned on the railing and looked down at the river water with disdain. She never did like Gotham. </p>
<p>Bruce rolled around pleasantries in his mouth for a few seconds, before swallowing them down again. Talia contacted him three hours ago, as he knew she would eventually, and requested they meet. She even let him pick the location, a show of either calculated trust or blind stupidity. But Talia was no fool. </p>
<p>There were only so many reasons as to why they were here, and it certainly wasn't to discuss the weather. </p>
<p>"What happened?" he asked instead.</p>
<p>Talia huffed out a laugh, but there was no humor to it. "Quick to the chase, I see," she said. </p>
<p>"You know me." </p>
<p>"I do."</p>
<p>He waited, and she sighed. The water below them flowed with no concern, and above them cars raced across the bridge. Without the usual layer of makeup on her face, the bags under Talia's eyes were painfully evident. </p>
<p>"It was just a fight," she said. Her lips drew thin, and she didn't look at him. "Damian was hiding things from me. Being careless. He knows how dangerous that can be."</p>
<p>"What <i>happened</i>, Talia?" Bruce asked again.</p>
<p>"It was just a fight," she said again, but it sounded less sure this time. "We… I threw his birds to the water. He said he wanted to stay in Bludhaven. He… He didn't mean it. I know he didn't mean it."</p>
<p>She stopped, then, to gather her thoughts or bite through words in her mind. Talia didn't often wear her emotions openly on her face, but Bruce still recognized anger in the corners of her eyes.</p>
<p>"And your… Your ward. Your Dick Grayson," she spat out. "Sticking his nose where it doesn't belong. Turning my own son against me. Was that what you wanted all along, to take him away from me? Did you send that boy after us?"</p>
<p>She was just barely keeping herself from boiling over. Paranoia was a new look on Talia, though it bared ugly colors. Bruce caught her gaze, and held it. </p>
<p>"I didn't," he said. </p>
<p>"Do not lie to me now-" </p>
<p>"I didn't," he stressed again. Talia looked back at him and somehow seemed like a young girl, not a woman, not a mother. She looked at him and somehow seemed to believe him. It was fear, it was guilt, it was desperation. "Talia, you have to tell me what happened that night."</p>
<p>She fell silent for a moment, eyes wide. Then she started shaking her head. "I was out of my mind. I was out of my mind, and by the time I came back he was gone."</p>
<p>Bruce pressed on. "Did you try to drown him?"</p>
<p>Talia shook her head, and closed her eyes. She didn't often show emotion on her face, but Bruce knew her as well as he knew her favorite shade of nail polish, even a decade later. "I don't know. I don't know, I don't know…"</p>
<p>Water splashed down the stream, and kids yelled in the street behind them. Bruce didn't know what to say. Somehow, he believed her still.</p>
<p>"He's alive," he decided on eventually. "And as well as he could be, right now. He refused to give a statement to the police."</p>
<p>Talia took a shaky breath, and nodded. "They're looking for me." </p>
<p>"Yes." </p>
<p>"Well, it is what it is." she looked down to the river, and her eyes were severe. There was no residue of tears, but there was a redness to them. "Damian never lied to me before."</p>
<p>"That can't be true."</p>
<p>"He didn't," she insisted.</p>
<p>Bruce sighed, and looked away. He tried to catch his reflection in the water, but it was too distorted, and Bruce considered he should perhaps approach city hall about cleaning out the river. He let Talia have a moment to collect herself, then asked, "Why did you call me here?"</p>
<p>"You called me here. I wouldn't have chosen to meet in this city on my deathbed."</p>
<p>"Talia."</p>
<p>It was her turn to sigh, then. "I still have some contacts in my hometown, as few as they are now," she said. She frowned down at the railing, but her back was straight. "I got news yesterday that my father is dead."</p>
<p>Bruce shot up in surprise. "What?" </p>
<p>She huffed out a laugh. "I had the same reaction."</p>
<p>Bruce tried to think of something worthwhile to say, but came up short. He shook his head, somewhere between disbelief and shock. "Who… who was it?" </p>
<p>"It's nothing as dramatic as that," Talia said. "He was an old man. He died a lucky death."</p>
<p>Bruce let the thought linger in his head, find its way through his throat and settle behind his teeth. It was a lot to chew on. He wondered, inevitably, if the situation could potentially lead to some future repercussions. If that was something he had time to dwell on.</p>
<p>"Good riddance, I'd say," he told her instead.</p>
<p>"I agree," Talia said.</p>
<p>"Does that mean you're welcome back home?"</p>
<p>"Hardly," Talia huffed. "The business and the estate will likely be split between whichever of my siblings he despised the least. I have no doubt my name was erased from the will, and I have no doubt that no remaining family I have would care to see me back. I wouldn't care to see them, either. "</p>
<p>Her face betrayed something between the line of resigned and resentful and angry, but not sad. She had a presentable look about her, despite the circumstances. She often had, though, as had Bruce himself. They were alike in that way, blouses and suits and high heels and ties.</p>
<p>"Just like that, six years of my life are over," she continued. "It's unlikely that my name will chase me from here on out, and the old bastard can burn in hell." </p>
<p>"Just like that," Bruce echoed.</p>
<p>"I don't know what I am meant to do now," Talia said, quietly. Bruce didn't know either. A tense silence followed, lasting longer than either of them could bear, before she asked, "Do you remember La Boca?" </p>
<p>"I do."</p>
<p>"There are not many instances in my life in which I recall being happy. But I was happy, there, with you." </p>
<p>"I was happy as well."</p>
<p>He meant it. The two of them were a couple forged in gold and ruby, with the means to live a life. It was easy. That was the problem. </p>
<p>"I loved you," Talia said. "I had not loved in the same way since." </p>
<p>"I loved you too," Bruce said. "But I have." </p>
<p>She nodded. There was a finality to it, a decision being made, and Bruce felt his stomach drop. "My father is dead. But I cannot go back to Nanda Parbat. And I cannot go back to Argentina."</p>
<p>"The offer still stands, Talia," he said. "I can help you, all you need to do is say yes. If not for my sake, and not for yours, for our son. Because I promise you, if you walk away now, I will never let you see him again."</p>
<p>Talia shook her head again, and this time a tear slid out of the corner of her eye. It traveled down to her chin and fell onto the palm of her hand. The river came towards them, grieving, forgiving, calm waters. But there was no place for it here.</p>
<p>"Can a mother not have a moment of weakness?" she asked. </p>
<p>"You are not fit to be a mother. I'm sorry."</p>
<p>"Well, I'm sorry too," Talia said. She wiped at her eyes and fixed her posture, but didn't look back at Bruce. "I'm sorry too, but I can't stay here. I know what your help looks like, and I'm not interested." </p>
<p>It was a disappointment he learned to expect, and was ready to accept. It was a punch to the gut all the same.</p>
<p>"I understand."</p>
<p>Talia gathered herself, wiping down her face and straightening the seams of her dress and coat. She stepped away from the railing like it was the last thing keeping her from falling, drowning, forgiving.</p>
<p>"Have no doubt, I will see him again," she said one last time. A promise, or a threat, or something else. "You can't stop me, beloved. As much as I loved you, I love him more."</p>
<p>Then she left, and Bruce was left alone with the river at his feet. A minute passed before he got up as well, and started making his way home.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. March, April, May, June (Bludhaven)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Finally we arrive at the last chapter! I've been writing this story for over a year, and it is so very close to my heart and something I am very proud of completing. I hope you enjoyed the journey so far, and that you enjoy this extra long final chapter. As for the future of this series, I had two prequels planned out for some of the other batkids. You can look forward to that sometime down the line.</p><p>As always, thank you for reading!</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The remainder of March had not been kind to them. Despite all the birds that breathed a sigh and all of the people that yelled thank god winter is over, despite the sky turning more blue by the day, and Dick taking leave from work to stay home with his brother. To them, it felt like just another September.</p><p>Damian stayed in Bludhaven, when all was said and done, quieter than Dick had ever known him. It wasn't a quiet he knew what to do with, something both more present and less so. All he could do was make room for it, in his one bedroom apartment. Set up the pull out couch in the living room and clean the kitchen, leave the door to his room open and the door to the bathroom closed.</p><p>All he could do was go home. Parkthorne Avenue welcomed Damian wholeheartedly between cups of tea and messy coffee tables. He looked more resigned than anything, and Dick let him sleep the rest of the week away.</p><p>That day in the hospital came to an end like a storm running its course, surprisingly anticlimactic. It left them soaked to the bone in the wreckage of the aftermath, not sure what to do. Dick found Bruce sitting with Tim in the lobby, with twin cups of coffee and a can of grape soda from the vending machine waiting for him. Damian had nearly died, not but twelve hours prior. Dick told Bruce he will be taking him home.</p><p>In the wake of the storm, Bruce couldn't argue. Damian still refused to talk to anyone but Dick. And the two of them returned to Gotham at his request.</p><p>The quiet followed them home and settled somewhere in the corner of the apartment, on top of the fridge or behind the TV or by one of the windows. Dick and Damian became accustomed to silence over the past few months, but now it had begun to turn sour. Damian was asleep, most of the time. But in the late days of recovery, he was first to speak.</p><p>It was the last day of March, and the night steadily made its way towards the first April midnight. They sat in the dark living room together, reminiscent of movie nights of months past where they fell asleep in front of the TV. But this time Dick was stubbornly awake for reasons beyond him, something he might recognize come daylight. He wanted to make sure Damian was getting rest. He wanted to make sure Damian was still alive.</p><p>Dick was familiar with fear of loss. He still remembered the split second before the fall.</p><p>Damian looked at the clock on the counter, the only source of light besides the moon in the middle of the starless night sky. He said, "Can I ask you a favor?"</p><p>Later, Dick will wonder if the late hour had been a purposeful choice. As it was, he said, "Anything."</p><p>"Promise me you won't look for her," Damian said. It was too dark to make out the details of his face, just on the other side of the couch, but he caught the shine of his eyes anyway. Dick couldn't tell If the kid was looking at him or at the window over his shoulder. "The police. Your people. Promise me you'll stop looking."</p><p>His people. Did Damian mean the Bludhaven police department, or Bruce Wayne and Co, all the way back in Gotham? Dick was silent for a long minute.</p><p>"Can you tell me what happened?" he asked in return. "Damian, please."</p><p>The quiet ran circles around them, and Damian didn't answer for a long few minutes. On the counter in the kitchen the clock slowly ticked past 11pm.</p><p>"I told her I want to stay in bludhaven," he said eventually. "We got in a fight and I hit my head. She didn't mean it."</p><p>Dick blinked. Despite himself, he was surprised. "Okay," he said.</p><p>"She didn't," Damian insisted.</p><p>"I believe you."</p><p>Dick recognized the truth in Damian's voice, as grim and as reluctant as it sounded. He thought about Argentina, and love, and the phone he gave him now lost to water damage. They both knew Damian wasn't telling the whole story, but at the very least it confirmed what they already knew.</p><p>He wanted to stay in Bludhaven.</p><p>Either way, it didn't paint Talia in any more of a flattering light.</p><p>"Promise me," Damian asked again. Dick shook his head.</p><p>"I don't know if I can, Dames."</p><p>Another silence followed. It was sour and empty of meaning, a September that grew long and cold.</p><p>"She was the only person I ever had," Damian said then, and it sounded like a confession. Dick closed his eyes in the dark. He wanted to say, you have me now. But he thought better of it. "I know she'll come back for me. Don't take her away."</p><p>Dick didn't know what to say. He wasn't one for words of wisdom, in recent days.</p><p>The late hour brought forth a truth or two, but midnight came anyway, and March inevitably turned into April. Spring hit them full force the following sunrise, and Argentina never happened, and Talia was still missing. The first day of the month marked a new kind of mourning.</p><p>March had not been kind to them. April wasn't any better.</p><p>Back in Gotham, things seemed to go on as they always did. A Crime Alley shade of evergreen, gloomy skies and gloomy streets and gloomy people, with Bruce Wayne in the middle of it all. He called every day now, but never had a lot to say. Instead he did what he did best and asked If there was anything they needed, offered to take care of useless little things, told Dick Alfred misses him.</p><p>He stopped asking about the investigation, and Dick knew him well enough to take note of that. Instead he tried to remember what it was like to inquire after a son, and insisted Dick let him pay for a new phone for Damian.</p><p>Tim texted him after the dinner with Jack the following weekend, something that slipped away from Dick's mind like most things did as of late. Jason accompanied him that evening, and Tim had more to say about that than the dinner itself. It was, according to Jason's unreliable account, remarkably underwhelming and thoroughly disappointing. In the absence of reasonable parties, he came in ready for a fight and left dissatisfied.</p><p>Dick asked about Jack, but they avoided the subject in a frustratingly Wayne fashion. Tim told him, "You already have too many balls in the air. They're bound to fall down eventually."</p><p>"I was a circus boy, Tim," Dick said in response. "I'm a very good juggler."</p><p>Tim told him to shut up, and that he sounded tired. Dick was reminded of the soda can Tim got him from the vending machine after the conclusion of that endless night, and selfishly wished that he still had him around now.</p><p>Jason made the trip to Bludhaven a week later, showing up announced one early Monday. His shoes were clean of any muddy Bludhaven this time, though his clothes were still windswept and his hair was still tousled, already growing longer again. And despite being the one to invite himself over he still managed to look thoroughly annoyed.</p><p>Dick found him standing outside his apartment with his motorbike helmet in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other. Tastefully as ever, he said, "Uh, what?"</p><p>Jason just frowned at him. "Move it, I can see your stack full kitchen sink and your fifty dirt mugs from here."</p><p>Dick moved aside, and let Jason walk past him into the apartment. He dumped his grocery bag and helmet on the kitchen counter, before heading to collect stray mugs from the coffee table. Dick closed the door after him, careful, and followed into the kitchen.</p><p>"I have groceries, Jason," he said.</p><p>Jason huffed. "Name one vegetable you bought in the last month."</p><p>"What? I-"</p><p>"Where's the kid, by the way?"</p><p>"Damian's, uh, I think he's still asleep in my room. Does tomato sauce count?"</p><p>"Isn't tomato a fruit?"</p><p>"What are you doing here again?"</p><p>"Making sure you're eating something other than pop tarts and box mac and cheese," Jason rolled his eyes, and waved Dick off before he had the opportunity to respond. He turned on the sink faucet, and the running water cut off any argument he had. "I'll finish up the dishes, you can sort the food."</p><p>There was no need for pleasantries, with Jason. So they did.</p><p>They made quick work of cleaning up the kitchen, with Jason's insistent prodding, and managed to finish most of the work in just under an hour. In the wake of the past couple of weeks, Dick found that he missed the simple things he used to hate. Once the dishes were back in their cabinets and the fridge was cleaned out and restocked, Dick stood in the middle of his kitchen feeling like he was the only thing left out of place, and didn't know what to do. He looked from Jason's helmet to the kettle, like he forgot how to be a human being.</p><p>Jason just slumped against the kitchen counter, and gave him an unimpressed look. "What? You gonna offer me a juice box or something?" he said. "You look like death walking, how about you sit down before you fall on your face?"</p><p>Dick sighed, but after a moment relented and sat down on the other side of the island. Jason turned on the kettle, and sat down as well.</p><p>They stared at each other for a moment. It was almost easy.</p><p>"I'm not gonna ask you how you're doing," Jason said eventually. "I know that's kind of a dick move. But I'm not letting you stress yourself into a nervous breakdown, either."</p><p>Dick shook his head. He had trouble falling asleep last night, feeling too restless to close his eyes and too wrung up to lie still for more than a few minutes at a time. When it became apparent that Damian was having similar troubles Dick offered to exchange his bed for the couch, and stayed up watching infomercials on TV the rest of the night. He did doze off eventually, though, and Damian did seem to fall asleep soon after. Considering everything, he couldn't really complain.</p><p>He didn't know how much of that was apparent on his face. Jason wasn't really one to judge.</p><p>"You don't need to worry," he told him.</p><p>"Stop playing superhero, you idiot," Jason shot back. "The martyr look is starting to get old."</p><p>Dick frowned at that. He couldn't think of a good comeback. He decided to let this one go.</p><p>"Are you staying for lunch?" he asked instead.</p><p>Jason snorted. "Who do you think is gonna make it? You?"</p><p>"Well, then you better start cooking," he said, and threw a kitchen towel at Jason's face. He swore in harmony with the kettle, who shrieked and turned off with a beep. Dick got up to pour them two cups of tea, and left the inevitable argument to another day.</p><p>He came into his room to wake Damian up a few minutes later, only to find him already awake. The kid was still in bed, with his hair mussed over and his eyes dragged down with the remnants of sleep, leftovers of morning sun pouring on his face. He blinked up at Dick when he opened the door, like his arrival had been a great disappointment.</p><p>It seemed he had been up for some time. The bedsheets were still a mess, but the window was now closed. On the nightstand, Dick's phone was still charging away.</p><p>"Todd's here?" was the first thing Damian said.</p><p>"He is," Dick told him, but didn't find much else to say. This part of the apartment felt all too quiet. "Do you want to get up for breakfast?"</p><p>Damian just looked at him for a moment, like he could see straight through his soul. It didn't have the same effect with his hair all over the place. All he said was, "I'm tired."</p><p>Dick didn't press. He left him to rest, or to pretend to.</p><p>Jason didn't stick around for much longer, after that. He made lunch and complained about Dick's apparently subpar tea and answered his questions about Gotham, then grabbed his things and bid his farewell. It was weird, to think back to the Jason Dick knew four or so years ago and compare him to this one. His thorns were still prickly, but they yielded with the years, just leftovers of the grief that used to be there. He wasn't present for his anger, back then, but he wondered if it looked anything like Parkthorne Avenue today.</p><p>There must be something to be said, about near death and its aftermath.</p><p>So Jason didn't stay the night, but he did come around often in the following days. Eventually Damian couldn't hide anymore, although even then it was as if he wasn't really around at all, more like a ghost haunting the living room couch than anything else. He had refused to talk to anyone besides Dick since he woke up in the hospital and he kept to his quiet now as well, watchful in the same way he'd always been. Still, sometimes he looked at Jason like he was a particularly interesting bug. And Jason was as himself as he'd ever been.</p><p>He seemed to carry his own sort of tired, as he kept coming back. It was a different flavor of silence than the one Jason usually had, and different again from the one Damian stuck to. Almost contemplative, in the absence of anything else, thoughts loud enough to be heard from the hallway and back. The next time he paid Dick a visit he brought along a book and a box of tea from home, and they made lunch together.</p><p>"The girls said they'll be heading back to the US in a couple of weeks," Jason told him over the stove. Dick was struggling with cutting an onion on his other side, but stopped to give him a look. "Tim talked with Cassy, they decided it's best they stick around Gotham for now."</p><p>"That sounds like a good idea, I suppose," Dick said carefully. He understood, even if he didn't think anything would really come of more worried faces. They used to joke that Stephanie and Cassandra were like the teenage bodyguards of Gotham City, and Bruce Wayne right in the middle of it. "How's B handling things?"</p><p>"I imagine the same way he handles everything."</p><p>Dick hummed something distasteful, and continued to work on dicing the onion. It stuck to his eyes and made them itch. He remembered how after the accident Jason became an expert on pushing people away, and how Bruce let him do it, respecting his wishes to a fault. He sank into a useless depression, made useless mistakes, stuck to the sidelines out of guilt.</p><p>Dick didn't want to play that game of amends again, five years later. And having everyone step on eggshells around him was getting old.</p><p>"I know you don't want me to worry, but holding back information is having the opposite effect, you know," he said.</p><p>"I'm not hiding anything," Jason said, and raised a brow when Dick turned to give him a look. "Believe it or not, Gotham didn't succumb to chaos just because you're on leave."</p><p>"Jason," Dick sighed.</p><p>"What?"</p><p>"What do you think, idiot?"</p><p>Jason frowned at him, disregard still clear in his eyes, before turning away again. "I can tell that you're stressed," he said, not unkindly.</p><p>Dick held back another sigh, and instead just shook his head. He looked back to his bedroom door, and it was closed. Damian kept insisting he was tired, though those claims became more commonplace as the days went by. He kept avoiding Jason, everytime he stopped by, and he kept burrowing into Dick's room as a means of refuge. It was April, and Argentina never happened.</p><p>Dick was fine sleeping on the couch, if it meant Damian would get any sleep at all.</p><p>"He heard us talking, the day you left," Dick said, then. "About telling Bruce. We had a fight, and he said they're leaving the States for good, but a month later he was drowning in a bathtub."</p><p>Jason was quiet, on the other side of the counter. Vegetables sizzled away on the stove, and he looked back at him without budging.</p><p>"It's not even about how I should have known," Dick continued. "I did know. I did everything I thought I should do, and it still wasn't enough. Now I'm scared that he hates me for it."</p><p>"He doesn't," Jason said. "You know this. The kid's mourning."</p><p>Dick shook his head. "I remember that year you didn't speak to us, after the accident," he said, and then paused. Jason waited, patient as he's never been. "When I heard what happened, I… I don't know. I wish I knew. I wish I could be a better brother."</p><p>"Don't be stupid, Dick."</p><p>"I was scared that we lost you, and then we did lose you. I was scared I was going to lose Damian too."</p><p>"It's not your fault. Neither of those things are your fault," Jason said. "Tim told me everything that happened with Damian and Talia when he came back to Gotham. Everyone's feeling so fucking sorry, but I think it's all bullshit. What is throwing blame good for now?"</p><p>Dick didn't know what to say to that. "Well, it has to be good for something."</p><p>Jason huffed. "This is probably the worst thing that ever happened to the kid, I get it. But what do you expect to change, blaming yourself? When I was in the hospital all I needed was time."</p><p>"And some very belated therapy."</p><p>"Sure, whatever," he shrugged. "You know you're the best of us, right?"</p><p>"You're the one who said the martyr look doesn't work on me, remember?" Dick said, and then sighed. "Please just tell me you didn't punch Jack Drake in the face? For my peace of mind?"</p><p>Jason barked out a laugh, but then just turned back around to the stove. Dick punched him in the shoulder. He punched him back.</p><p>"It wasn't that interesting, don't worry," Jason told him then, smacking his hand away. "I didn't lie, nothing really happened. Jack wasn't a total asshole, but it was still Jack. I think Tim was mostly disappointed."</p><p>"What happened?"</p><p>"As much as you would expect," he shrugged. "The food was fine, the conversation was awkward, Tim's step mom did most of the talking. The man looked at me like I was a stain on his carpet."</p><p>"Oh."</p><p>"Tim told me he never did apologize for anything, so what's it to me? I took him to get some real food after and then we crashed at mine."</p><p>Dick was quiet for a moment, not sure what to say. In the time it took him to think it over Jason was done with the food, and had already taken it off the heat. All they made for lunch was fried rice, but Damian will probably claim not to be hungry until Jason leaves.</p><p>He thought about Tim, a teenager with an entire universe held on his shoulders. He had been carrying his own since he became an adult. Jason turned back to him, and crossed his arms.</p><p>"You see what I'm saying, right? I got this, Tim and Bruce and everything. We can handle ourselves. You should take care of your own shit first."</p><p>Dick had so much to say, that words escaped him. So he just nodded, and they let the conversation slide away.</p><p>When Jason left, he forgot his book on the coffee table. It was a yellow stained and dog eared copy of Little Women, something that Dick remembered seeing on the shelf of his room at the Wayne house. Later that day, Damian picked it up and examined the cover like it had offended him.</p><p>"This is Todd's," he said, and it didn't sound like a question.</p><p>Despite everything else about Jason, Dick knew him to be an avid book lover, and a sentimental one to boot. He tended to carry around books from time to time. So he told Damian that he'll let him know he left it at the apartment, and for a few days that was that. It was a surprise, when both Damian and the book disappeared a couple times during that weekend, found again in the corner of Dick's room or on the steps outside the building.</p><p>It was difficult to tell what was going on in his mind and behind his rib cage, still. Ever since April began the state of the apartment had become unbearably static. It was even more surprising, then, when Damian reemerged at the end of the day with Little Women in hand and asked if they could go return the book themselves.</p><p>Damian refused to return to Gotham since the day he left it. It came up time and time again, a one sided fight outside an ice cream shop or alone in a hospital room. He wanted to stay with Dick, if only because he didn't want to go with Bruce. Dick looked over the book, the yellowing front cover and the coffee stain on the opening page, and didn't understand.</p><p>Regardless, he called Jason the next day.</p><p>Jason sounded more amused than anything, something that Dick never got used to and was annoying even over the phone. He said he was planning to head back to Bludhaven the next weekend, but that they could drop by one of his PT sessions if they had the time.</p><p>Dick had been to the Gotham rehab center a couple times, mostly to pick up Jason back when he still didn't have a driving license. The place had the same odd feeling hospitals and gas stations had, a liminal space to all but a select unfortunate few. Jason used to say going to therapy felt just like attending a high school drama club, an entire building that screamed <em>once more with feeling</em>.</p><p>He said it was an acquired taste, but some people just didn't like coffee.</p><p>Dick was still off work and off Gotham and so life began to feel like its own liminal space, stuck in the bitter aftertaste of March. He didn't mind heading back home for the first time since the holidays. They had nowhere else to be Monday morning.</p><p>It was surprising, but it did seem that Gotham had lived on without him. It wasn't any different, driving into town after being away an entire winter, and the sky remained where it always had been. Damian sat in the passenger seat next to him, with his backpack cradled close to his chest and his eyes fixed somewhere outside the window. Not much had changed about him either, for better or for worse. He looked out onto the city with a disinterested frown, and said nothing.</p><p>The kid looked an awful lot like his mother, but Dick could also see the Bruce in him. He was there, in the shape of his eyes and the arch of his eyebrows. In the face he made when Dick told a bad joke and in his smile, when he meant it. Dick found himself thinking about March, his twenty eighth birthday lost somewhere in the mix of it.</p><p>The physiotherapy center itself was a distant little thing right at the edge of town, looking out onto the Gotham river and the bridge standing over it. Traffic was a far away sound there, on the other side of the bank, but it existed nevertheless in the backdrop of the city. Dick parked the car on the side of the road, and they walked up to the sitting area outside the doors. It was all glass here, the windows and the grass and the sun.</p><p>It smelled a little like chlorine. Today still, it wasn't too dissimilar from a hospital or a public pool. A bird was perched on a bench, but it flew away when they approached.</p><p>Damian paused on the edge of the lawn, and looked up through one of the glass windows with furrowed brows and set jaw. Dick stopped next to him.</p><p>"Dames?"</p><p>"I changed my mind. I don't want to come in."</p><p>Dick blinked, surprised, though perhaps he shouldn't have been. He sighed. "Damian…"</p><p>"I changed my mind," he said again. "You give him the stupid book. I'm not coming in."</p><p>Dick held back another sigh, but didn't say anything. He didn't want to argue now, about this of all things. Dumb stubbornness was a Wayne quality he dealt with often enough. Damian looked away from him, something about him almost angry, so Dick let him be angry.</p><p>"We have nowhere else to be, if you wanna go home," he said. "I'll go find Jason, and then we can leave."</p><p>Past hallways and hallways Dick arrived by the hydrotherapy pool, where he saw Jason's bag sitting on a bench next to a pair of sneakers. The man himself stood on the other side of the glass door with his head buried in his phone and a frown on his face. Dick knocked to get his attention, and when he looked up the frown on his face smoothed out in what could almost be a smile.</p><p>He stepped out to greet him a moment later, barefooted and bare faced, a smile that was effortlessly Jason. "What's up?" he said. "You finally came to save Gotham from economical collapse?"</p><p>Dick raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "You're in a good mood."</p><p>"Don't ruin it," Jason rolled his eyes. He pocketed his phone and slipped back into his shoes before joining Dick in the hallway. They were right next to the dressing rooms and drinking fountains, an otherwise empty part of the building where the air stood still. Dick had never been to the pool, the few times he had been inside, but it seemed no more exciting than anything else. Another part of someone else's life. "I'm bored, and my instructor's late. Do you wanna go grab some coffee?"</p><p>"Not really into coffee these days, to be honest," Dick said, then shook his head. "But either way I don't think we'll stay long. Coming back to Gotham was probably a bad idea."</p><p>"What? Why?"</p><p>Dick took out Jason's book from his bag then and held it up to him, presenting it like it had been anything other than just an old paperback. The title looked less impressive in the daylight, merely a black lettered font, the green cover closer to white under the fluorescent lights.</p><p>Jason took the book, careful as he often isn't, and looked up at Dick with a puzzled look. "Where's your kid?"</p><p>"Damian's waiting out front. He didn't want to come inside."</p><p>Jason furrowed his brows and looked back down to his book, humming some thoughtful sound. The air stood still for a moment, before he huffed something akin to a laugh and handed the book back. "How 'bout you go grab some apple juice or whatever," he said, and patted Dick on the shoulder. "I'm going out for a smoke."</p><p>Dick accepted the book, more out of surprise than anything. "Didn't you quit?"</p><p>"I did."</p><p>"Then why are you smoking now?"</p><p>Jason waved him off with another eyeroll, and turned to make his way back to the lobby. "I'm not. Get off my dick, dickface," he said, and was gone before Dick could think to say anything back.</p><p>He was left standing in the hallway by himself, then, between one reluctant end and another. He sighed, and looked down to the book in his hand like it might just sigh back at him. Dick had never been a big reader. But Jason and he both knew he wasn't that much of an idiot, either.</p><p>The book screamed, <em>once more with feeling</em>, but what did it know about boys with grudges? Dick shoved it back in his bag and went to look for a vending machine.</p><p>*</p><p>Gotham wasn't any better the second time around, though perhaps that was to be expected. The city was still nonsensical and still dull, in the persistent gray of the sky or in the never ending traffic or in the people, no less dense and no less stupid than they were six months ago.</p><p>Damian should have predicted the growth in his resentment. He must have forgotten, in the midst of everything else, how much worse this was than the hazy downtown Bludhaven.</p><p>March had not been kind to him.</p><p>That too was nonsensical, both the fact of him being alive and the fact of him being alive in New Jersey, of all places. It was infuriating. It was unfair. It was appropriate, still, in cruel little ways. April first came to him without warning and deemed him a fool. Damian knew now that in the grand scheme of greatness, he never really stood a chance.</p><p>Somehow, even now, the only thing he could think about was his notebooks. He had almost forgotten about them until Grayson retrieved his bag from police custody, his pocket knife and his clothes and his books still tucked safely inside. But the notebooks were missing, drowned where he had left them on the other side of the world, birds and birds and birds. Grayson told him there was nothing left to save.</p><p>He got him a new sketchbook not a week later, but Damian didn't want to use it. He was angry, but at this point it felt more like a state of being. Damian wouldn't know what to do with himself if it were to stop.</p><p>Well, be it. There was nothing to draw in the parking lot of a rehab center anyway.</p><p>Damian remembered the first time he had really seen the man behind Jason Todd clearly enough he could almost paint the scene. The muted TV on the other side of the coffee table, the boots sitting by the front door, the bored curiosity in Todd's eyes when he looked up at Damian. He wasn't the worst of them, but he was hardly a friendly face, either.</p><p>He told Damian then that he read Little Women every February. So why carry it around months later, as the slow crawl of April nags at their heels? A useless gesture, some implied intention, or simply a man of countless questions and no reason? Damian still didn't know what to make of the past six months, or the past six years. It was as possible as anything that the paranoia imprinted on him by his mother was running him dry, and Jason Todd wasn't any smarter than he seemed.</p><p>But Damian knew he left the book for him to find. And he felt like an idiot, letting it drive him all the way back into Gotham.</p><p>He didn't want to be here anymore. Behind these glass doors were just sets of hospital rooms by a different name, the same disinfectant smell floating through the air and the same people sitting behind reception desks. Hospitals were always a dangerous thing, on the run. They attracted attention like flies to a roadkill. Damian and his mother always took care of themselves, blood on bathroom tiles and all. They never did anything recklessly.</p><p>Damian remembered the fight in the bathroom, how the humid air stuck to his skin and how the water stood still despite the hammering of his heart. How it made no sense, when he knew his mother better than he knew himself. He remembered waking up and seeing the face of Tim Drake before Grayson pulled him into a hug. It made him nauseous. It made him numb. He didn't want to think about it.</p><p>All in all, it wasn't a bad book.</p><p>The silence broke by the rustling of the wind and an opening of a door, seeping into the distant noise of traffic. Damian turned around to the sound of footsteps, and spotted Jason Todd on the other side of the lawn. He looked like just another person, something that was almost normal, although nothing in Gotham fit that criteria. Their eyes met an unfortunate moment later.</p><p>Jason Todd approached Damian's bench like it was easy, and leaned over the backrest to peer down at him. "What's up, shrimp?"</p><p>Damian scowled. "Fuck off."</p><p>Todd raised an eyebrow at that, unimpressed. His face was a blank slate, his tone conversational. "That's some strong language from a preschooler, don't you think?" he said. "I'm sure our dear Dickie didn't teach you that."</p><p>Damian scowled some more. The day was too sunny and his hands felt too empty and he wanted to go home, somewhere that wasn't here but wasn't anywhere else either. He wanted April to be over already. He did not want to be having this conversation.</p><p>"Grayson has your stupid book," he said instead.</p><p>"I know," Todd shrugged. "So? Did you read it?"</p><p>"No."</p><p>"Really? I don't believe you."</p><p>He smiled something smug and annoying, then, and his canines were just as sharp as the rest of him. There was a piece of lint stuck to his hair and a smudge of ink on his thumb. His face looked younger than Damian remembered. He couldn't stand it.</p><p>"What do you want?"</p><p>Todd shrugged again. "You're the one who drove all the way to crime city to return a book," he said. "What do you want?"</p><p>That threw them into a boiling silence, though not one that was meant to last long. A kettle boiling over on the stove. He wasn't wrong. That didn't mean Damian liked the notion of it any better.</p><p>If there was a time to throw caution to the wind, why not now?</p><p>"You read that book every February," he said.</p><p>"I do," Todd agreed.</p><p>"Why?"</p><p>He seemed to really give it a thought, humming something or other into the air. "Some bullshit sentimentality, if I'm being honest," he decided on eventually. "I finished it for the first time when I was in recovery and bored out of my mind. Now I read it because I'm encouraged to practice healthy routines and rituals, or whatever."</p><p>Damian frowned again, this time at a grassy patch by his feet. When it became clear he had nothing to say, Todd added, "This copy is actually my mom's, but I've been carrying it around for a few years now."</p><p>"Why did you leave it at Grayson's?"</p><p>"Thought you might like it."</p><p>"I'm not stupid."</p><p>"I agree," Todd said, unfazed. He leaned in further, then, until his eyes were level with Damian's. "You know, the words <em>problem child</em> are written all over your face. I used to get that all the time, too. I know it sucks, especially when it comes from family."</p><p>I am not like you, Damian wanted to say. He thought about Grayson and bit his tongue. Todd waited for a reply, somewhere on the details of his face, but he wasn't going to get one.</p><p>"I think all that staying on guard business makes you forget to give a shit, sometimes," he continued, then. "But Dick cares about you, so I guess I might as well."</p><p>There was a beat of silence. It lasted for both a second and a year. Todd gave him an odd look.</p><p>"Why didn't you want to come inside?" he asked eventually.</p><p>Damian looked from the grass at his feet to the building behind them, the sun shining off the windows and right into his eyes. It was just a building. It held no grudges. It offered no favors.</p><p>"I hate Gotham," he said.</p><p>It felt like an understatement, but Damian couldn't find truer words. He hated this city with no hesitation and no pride, hated it the same way he hated hospitals and his father and the tree in the front yard of the Wayne house. The way he hated all the Wayne orphans, living in it. Jason Todd wasn't blind to it. He looked back at the building behind them with no prejudice, and sighed. He turned his gaze to the Gotham river instead.</p><p>"I get it," he said. "When it comes to medical facilities… Well, can't say that I'm a big fan either."</p><p>"What's your deal, then?" Damian asked.</p><p>Todd snorted. "My deal? In rehab?"</p><p>It was Damian's turn to shrug, then. "I'm here in crime city because you wanted me to be," he said. "I read your book. I came. What's your deal?"</p><p>Todd made a face, but there was something more similar to amusement than reluctance laced at its corners. He got up and sat down on the other side of the bench, and Damian let him.</p><p>"It's a long fucking story," he said. "But when I was a bit younger I got in a car accident. Fucked up my leg. Fucked up everything with Bruce as well."</p><p>"Bruce?" Damian asked, and the name felt foreign on his tongue.</p><p>"Well, things were already far from perfect before I went ahead and almost died," Todd said. "But yeah. After all that I was too ashamed to face him, or any of the others for that matter, so I didn't. We didn't talk for nearly a year."</p><p>Damian tried to make sense of that, but fell short. "I don't get it," he said. "Why?"</p><p>Todd just sighed, and shook his head. "It's really a long story. I was a problem kid. I got too used to my reputation. All that teen angst shit," he said, and then paused for a moment, as if trying to make sense of his own words himself. He looked over to the Gotham river like he might find an answer standing on the other side of the bank. "He told me not to look for her. But I was stupid, I thought… I don't even know what I thought."</p><p>Damian blinked. He felt they were talking in circles, and he kept missing the point. "Look for who?"</p><p>"My bio mom," Todd said, then laughed. "I told you it's a long story. We better not get into it now."</p><p>"Did you find her?"</p><p>"Yeah, let's just say that didn't really work out."</p><p>Damian stopped short, at that. He didn't know what to say. Todd sighed again.</p><p>"Either way, I was in and out of the hospital for some time," he said. "It sucked and PT hurt like hell. I hated it. I Hated everyone. I hated myself. You know the drill."</p><p>He did know, to some extent, the going ons of the after. March had not been kind to him. "Then what?" he asked.</p><p>Todd shrugged. "I got better, got over my fear of cars, got a license, got a motorbike. Everyone hates that thing, it's great," he said. "And now I'm here. I don't know."</p><p>"How?"</p><p>Jason Todd sighed. For the first time since Damian met him he looked thoughtful. The sky found them in the approaching noon, clearing up their little patch of Gotham and casting sun onto their faces.</p><p>"That's the million dollar question, isn't it?" he said, then. "Maybe I was lucky. Maybe it just takes time, and a dad you can guilt trip money out of. Maybe it takes someone who gives a shit."</p><p>I am not like you, Damian wanted to say. He thought about Grayson and bit his tongue.</p><p>"I don't think I'm very lucky," he said instead.</p><p>"We're not very lucky people, here in Gotham,"Jason agreed. Another moment passed in silence before he suddenly said, "So? What did you think about the book?"</p><p>Damian blinked in surprise. "I haven't finished it."</p><p>Todd raised a brow at that. "And you're returning it already?" he asked, bewildered. He shook his head once again, and somehow looked young. "Tell you what, you can hold on to it for now. It's not like February's in any hurry to make its way back around."</p><p>Damian had lost all words, at this point. The only thing that left his mouth was a simple, "Okay."</p><p>Jason Todd nodded, satisfied, and made to get up. It seemed that whatever truce held them in together in the empty parking lot came to an unceremonial end, leaving behind it nothing but a midst spring sun and some unspoked cease-fire. Life went on somewhere in the streets below them.</p><p>"I better go find Dick, by the looks of it he got lost again," Todd said. "I'll send him back your way. See you around, kid."</p><p>He left without further words, and Damian let him. A stray bird found its back to one of the car hoods, paying Gotham no mind.</p><p>When Grayson came back, it was with a bag of chips and two cans of coke. There wasn't much to say, about books or birds or the fresh footprints in the lawn. Damian wanted to go home, so they went home. Grayson's eyes remained just as kind, and in the backdrop of the early afternoon Damian felt he had been ungrateful his entire life.</p><p>They finished the chips on the way to Bludhaven, and left the sodas on the counter.</p><p>The rest of April went by slowly, with each passing day weighing heavier than the last. Nights felt especially long in Parkthorne Avenue, something Damian didn't even know was possible considering all the endless nights of the past six months. Perhaps he was just too used to midnight streets, the goings on of alleyways and ice cream shops five hours at a time. Perhaps he was too used to sharing a bed, somewhere in downtown Bludhaven.</p><p>He thought about his mother often, though nothing came out of it. Talia Al Ghul of September through March felt like something more of an abstract now, a memory of someone Damian couldn't afford to remember. As much a stranger as the rest of their family were.</p><p>Damian hadn't seen what their bathroom looked like after the fight, if it was anything like a different bloodied shower and near death, but even if he could make sense of it he wouldn't tell. His mother never did anything recklessly, never did anything foolishly. In the most complicated of times, this truth was simple.</p><p>He hadn't told anyone what exactly happened that evening, wasn't even sure how much of it he remembered correctly himself. But he did know, even now, that she wasn't gone for good. Grayson told him that Ra's Al Ghul is dead.</p><p>Somehow, that wasn't a scenario he had thought to prepare for.</p><p>He spent his nights awake in Grayson's bed, instead. Damian knew all the while that neither of them was getting any sleep, staring at different ceilings in different parts of the apartment, the light from the muted TV in the living room creeping its way through the crack in the door. Still, the muffled sounds of the living kept him company in the latest of hours. And Richard Grayson was kind, even after all this time.</p><p>In the mornings they would talk, for what felt like the first time in months. And with a deep breath April, too, came to an end.</p><p>Damian finished reading the book sometime in the midst of it all, and began rereading it a few days later. It didn't provide any new epiphanies, about Jason Todd or the state of one's being or what he's meant to do now, but he liked it all the same. He kept the book in his backpack, where the rest of his books remained, until Grayson eventually made room for them in the living room shelves. The March sisters sat above the TV with a sense of pride that was unlike them, a tattered book among photographs and knickknacks.</p><p>Damian shoved his new sketchbook to the back of the shelf, where he could just barely see the black cover peeking out behind a decorative bowl.</p><p>He still noticed the birds, some early mornings.</p><p>Then, just out of ear shot, there was Gotham. And in the backdrop of everything that came with it, there was Bruce Wayne. Damian hadn't spoken with his father since he left for Bludhaven with his mother in September, but he knew the man made an appearance in the hospital the day she went missing. He knew, to an extent, that he had arranged things for Damian to be able to stay in Bludhaven with Grayson. He knew, to an extent, that things have not been calm in the house at the end of Bristol street.</p><p>The month Damian spent in the Wayne house and its thrilling conclusion was not one he remembered kindly, but suddenly all of that seemed almost irrelevant. He had been angry his entire life, was taught hatred like a mother tongue and resentment like a second language, but he didn't know what to do with it now.</p><p>He wasn't part of his father's gaggle of children. He didn't want to be. He could no longer hate them, either. Damian thought about what Todd had said, about luck and family, someone who gives a shit or a dad you can guilt trip for money. He'd already gotten a new phone out of the whole ordeal. They weren't lucky people in Bludhaven, either.</p><p>May brought no news, not about birds drowned or birds drawn and not about investigations or mothers, just a cloudless sky and an apathy turned routine. Bruce Wayne called often, early morning conversations that Grayson muted the TV for and boiled the kettle over. It almost seemed like a secret, it almost seemed like a request, but there was no hiding in an apartment that small. Damian lay awake in bed and listened behind closed bedroom doors to the sound of tea making and murmured reassurance, the static of a time not quite night and not quite day. It was, despite it all, a comforting sound in the backdrop of the apartment. A calm water washing the silence away.</p><p>"We're doing fine," Grayson said over the phone, easy. "We're doing fine."</p><p>*</p><p>May happened, somehow, without anyone noticing. Damian woke up one early morning to find the sun peeking through the living room blinds and the month gone away. There wasn't much to do about it. He got up and turned on the electric kettle.</p><p>The door to Grayson's bedroom was open, the pile of haphazardly thrown laundry missing and the washing machine at the end of the hall humming away. The birds, somewhere on the other side of the window, had woken up singing.</p><p>Damian couldn't really say he liked tea all that much, but he drank it anyway. When Grayson eventually reemerged, he let him have the rest of it.</p><p>They've settled into a lazy routine, over the days, and it joined them at the kitchen counter and over the stove now as well. Grayson's hair was still wet, and there was a smear of toothpaste on the collar of his shirt. He made eggs and toast. It had been eight months in Bludhaven.</p><p>Damian thought about this city as a very real thing, for what must have been the first time since he became part of it. He thought about Nanda Parbat, and Gotham, and obnoxious American holidays.</p><p>Bludhaven lived on, somewhere on the other side of the window. Damian looked at his now empty tea mug and said, "My birthday was last month."</p><p>The washing machine ended its cycle, and the toaster threw a slice of bread onto the counter. Grayson looked up in surprise, fork still in hand, and blinked at nothing. Then, after a moment of silence, he laughed. "Mine too," he said. "I totally forgot."</p><p>Damian was twelve and some, though on his fake ID he would have been just shy of eleven. He found himself laughing, too. The sound carried all the way through the kitchen, dumb noise that lasted for a minute or two. And the day flew away before it could sink its teeth into their backs.</p><p>At times, Damian would sit on the steps outside and wait for the sky to darken, counting cars as they drove by. There were no imaginative colors in this neighborhood, just the same black and white and gray. Just the same Bludhaven, and the same Gotham. He did his best not to think of anything, and failed every time.</p><p>He remembered Jason Todd of February, smoking on these same steps outside and ignoring Damian as Damian ignored him in turn. He remembered his mother, and her favorite shade of nail polish. He remembered Beth March, dead. Ra's Al Ghul, dead. And Damian, too, found drowned in a bathtub.</p><p>When the sky would turn from a pink to a darkening purple, he would head back inside. Wandering outside after dark had lost its appeal at some point, and he stopped carrying his knife around anyway.</p><p>"What happens when you don't find her?" he asked one evening. The TV was playing for nobody, while the two of them sat at the kitchen island instead. The apartment felt quiet, despite the distant chatter and the humming of the night. "With me. What happens with me when this is all over?"</p><p>Grayson looked at him with eyes that were too understanding. They were a clear blue, but the sky outside was pitch black. "What do you mean?" he asked.</p><p>Damian looked back to the TV, now playing commercials for some useless home appliance or other, and to the new books on the shelf overhead. His backpack still sat against the wall, and at the end of the hall the two doors were closed. It was a single bedroom apartment. Grayson had been sleeping on the couch more often than not.</p><p>"I know I can't stay here forever."</p><p>Grayson shook his head. "You can stay here as long as you want to, Damian."</p><p>Damian felt it had been hanging in the air between them for forever. "But?"</p><p>Grayson sighed, resigned. He leaned over the counter and looked Damian in the eyes, like it was easy. "But," he agreed. "I do think you should consider having a talk with your dad."</p><p>Damian frowned. "Why?"</p><p>"He's been calling every day, you know," Grayson said. He leveled Damian with a look, but Damian just frowned back harder. "He won't pressure you, because he knows you don't want to see him. But he's your dad, kid."</p><p>"So what? It's not like I asked him to be."</p><p>Grayson held back another sigh. He interlocked his fingers, and drew them apart again. "Listen, I know how things ended last time, but I think we were all oblivious to what should have been," he said. "Bruce has a responsibility, now that your mother isn't around. He knows it, and I know you do too."</p><p>There was a beat of silence, and Damian didn't say anything. Dick went on, still gentle and still kind. It was almost infuriating. "He does care, Damian," he said. "You tell me what happens next. Either way, I'll still be here."</p><p>Damian knew, in the back of his head, that it would come to this eventually. It didn't mean he had to like it.</p><p>"My mother told me he was the best man she knew," Damian said. "She also told me he was a fool. He didn't even know about me."</p><p>"Well, I don't think we can fault him for that," Grayson answered.</p><p>Damian thought he ought to fault him for something, but said nothing. Instead he asked, "Why does he care now?"</p><p>Grayson paused and scratched at his neck, the look of a man choosing his words carefully. He looked over to the window in the living room, but the sky was as starless as ever. "I knew Bruce for most of my life," he said eventually. "He cares, always, way too much. To a fault, really. He cared about your mom a lot. He cared about the two of you enough to let you leave as you did."</p><p>That he trusted her, goes unsaid. There was never a point at which Talia Al Ghul did not know what she was doing.</p><p>"He said not to come back," Damian said.</p><p>"He did, didn't he?" Grayson said with a sigh. "I don't know, I can't speak for the guy. Family is never easy. I wish I could make it easier for you."</p><p>Damian waited for Grayson to say something more, but it seemed he didn't have anything else to say. In the silence, the apartment sounded too loud.</p><p>"My mother loved me," Damian said.</p><p>"I know," Grayson replied.</p><p>"She did."</p><p>"I know." It was as honest as anything, earnest from the corners of Grayson's mouth to the curve of his spine. He looked so serious, without that stupid smile on his face. "Do you want to tell me what happened, that day?"</p><p>Damian looked away. He gulped, but it still felt like he had broken glass stuck in his throat. "I'm sorry. I am sorry for everything, I promise."</p><p>"I know you are, kiddo," Grayson said. "I'm not the one you should apologize to."</p><p>Damian nodded his head, but couldn't bring himself to look back up. It was easy to be sorry to Grayson. He knew he would forgive, even when he didn't want him to. Holding grudges was something Damian was familiar with, but he knew that once he stops being angry he'd have to confront whatever comes next. He held it back, inside his chest and behind his ribs, but he could feel it leaking out even now.</p><p>Grayson got up and moved over to Damian's side of the counter, before giving him a hug. Damian rested his head on his shoulder, and wiped at his eyes.</p><p>"I'll do it if you want me to," he told him.</p><p>"Thank you, Dames," Grayson said back.</p><p>The night ended unceremoniously after that, tired and drawn out and over all too soon. Somehow, the sky outside remained the same inky shade of black through it all. Grayson fell asleep with the door to his room open and his socks thrown in the hall outside the bathroom. When Damian walked inside, a smiley face drawn on the fogged up mirror greeted him.</p><p>He snorted, brushed his teeth, and fell asleep before the sun could find its way back into the sky.</p><p>The rest of the month went by easy, and as the end neared Grayson was preparing to go back to work. Damian had nothing to say about all that, though thinking about the time passing by made him feel something he couldn't quite name. Hours and days and months flowed differently, when there was no finish line at the end of it all, and inevitably too was inevitable.</p><p>He had agreed to speak with his father, but Gotham still felt years away.</p><p>He thought of the people living there often, the tree in the front yard of the Wayne residence and the view of the Gotham river from the rehab center parking lot. It wasn't easy to love, but they loved it all the same. And Damian was the one who chose to stay in Bludhaven.</p><p>Even in a future muddied by the repercussions of his past, he liked this city. He liked Grayson, and he liked his little corner in Parkthorne Avenue. Someday his mother would be back, he knew that as surely as he knew that summer would come at the end of spring. Someday he might know his father like he wanted to know him six years or six months ago, and maybe someday he'd even get to celebrate Christmas just to see what it's like. None of that particularly mattered now.</p><p>On the shelf overhead the TV in the living room, Damian's sketchbook waited for him despite his best efforts to forget about it, patiently sitting among the tattered paperbacks and tacky decoratives. The empty pages weighed heavy in his hands when he opened it for the first time since Grayson handed it to him, two months ago.</p><p>The birds of Bludhaven sang simple songs outside the window, morning doves that held no grudges and offered no epiphanies. Damian drew the first bird of March through June on the corner of a page, and that was simple too.</p><p>And on a weekend no different from any other weekend, Grayson returned home with a boxed cake and two cans of grade soda in hand. He smiled his toothpaste commercial smile, a gesture so familiar and so missed it made Damian smile back.</p><p>"Happy birthday, kid," he said.</p><p>"Happy birthday," Damian replied.</p><p>They turned off the light in the kitchen and lit up two boxes of colorful candles instead, twelve and twenty eight balanced carefully on chocolate frosting like a little starry night of its own. And in the backdrop of everything Bludhaven it wasn't easy to love, but he loved all the same.</p><p>They blew them out together, and ate until their teeth ached. It was too sweet, but Damian didn't mind.</p>
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